Kefka's Legacy
by FFVI-fan-1984
Summary: In a world reeling from catastrophe, un-thanked heroes robbed of their former magical powers must define a new place for themselves. Sabin's journey takes him across a world that may never recover, a world whispering dangerous hints of magic's rebirth.
1. Prologue

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Prologue

Terra reached down with her pale hands and pushed the stone aside. She picked up her torch to cast its illumination over the ground. Light still avoided the land around the ruins of Kefka's tower, but something gleamed in the darkness. Terra's heart pounded. This could be it, the remains of the Sealed Gate. It was here somewhere, she knew it.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha! Warmer, warmer, colder! Cold! You'll never find it."

Terra dropped the torch and clapped her hands over her ears, but the voice persisted.

"You opened the gate for me once and look what you got for it. If you open it again do you really think the Espers will want to take you back? After what you did to them?"

Terra fell to her knees, banging them on the hard stones. She cried and wailed. "Leave me alone!" But Kefka's voice only laughed inside her head.


	2. State of Figaro

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 1: The State of Figaro

"Eleven o'clock and all is…" The hoarse voice broke off into a fit of coughing. A traveler lifted his attention from the empty streets of South Figaro, but the town crier retreated from the balcony without completing his report. The traveler shook his head and moved on towards his destination, the town inn.

He easily found the building, a large two-story structure built into the side of a hill that sloped down towards the docks. It had once housed the inn, a café, and downstairs, a shop for charms and mystical relics. An X had been painted over the "Charms and Relics" sign. Beneath it hung a sign simply advertising "Jewelry". Beneath that a third sign stated: "going out of business".

The traveler entered the café. A dim light emanated from deeper within the building. It illuminated a maze of tables with chairs stacked upside down atop them. The traveler was a large man, but he threaded between the furniture carefully. He came to the desk of the inn and rang the bell.

"Just a moment." The source of the voice wound its way through passageways from the rear of the building and materialized at the front. The voice belonged to a thin, old innkeeper with a tuft of white hair standing up on his scalp and half-moon reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Upon seeing the guest he patted his hair self-consciously, but it floated back up on a bit of static charge.

"Oh." exclaimed the innkeeper. He looked up at the imposing figure standing before him and said nothing more.

The guest wore plain loose-fitting cotton clothes and traveling boots. He carried a small satchel and a leather-bound cylinder on the belt at his waist. Time and experience had weathered his boyish looks. His face had grown handsome and mature with age. He kept his blonde hair cropped except for three rat tails woven with cobalt beads. His tan skin bulged with muscle. "I'd like to rent a room," he said with a disarming smile.

"Of course."

No one moved.

The traveler took the initiative. He dropped his satchel, tugged open the ties, then pulled out a bag of gold pieces, emptying half on to the counter.

"Planning on staying a long time?" asked the innkeeper, looking up from the pile of coins.

"Not more than a week."

"But, you've overpaid."

"Keep it."

"No, no. I can't take your money," insisted the innkeeper.

The big man plucked two coins from the pile then shoved the remainder across the counter.

"I'm not paying any less. I know you need the business."

The innkeeper nodded absently. Leaving the pieces where they lay, he took a key from the wall and handed it over. "Room one. First door on your right."

The man picked up his satchel, headed down the hall, then turned. "Don't you need my name?"

"No. There won't be any other guests."

The traveler nodded and headed to his room.

He slept for only a few hours, but rose before dawn feeling rested. He pulled on a blue sleeveless tunic and slipped into simple cotton trousers tied at the waist with a bit of rope. Barefoot, he left the inn quietly. He walked over uneven cobblestones to the modest town square.

He began a series of stretches, but soon proceeded to more difficult exercises: one-handed pushups, handstands, one foot calf-raises off of a bench. The sun had only just begun to paint the tops of the western-most buildings in town. The man advanced to two-finger pushups, handstand-ups, one-legged squats while holding the bench above his head.

The sun crested the rooftops and now flashed across his skin as he began his routines: step, step, block, jab, high kick, step, block, jab.

Shutters banged open. Some villagers gawked at the stranger over simple breakfasts of oatmeal, but most hurried straight to their chores. The villagers made their way to a building on the north end of the town square. They entered empty-handed in the door marked with the worn sword emblem and exited with hoes or shovels from the door with the cracked shield emblem.

The stranger greeted people with a strong clear voice as they passed, but he received no more than the occasional nod in response.

Two boys came charging into the square shouting and chasing each other, oblivious to the martial artist. The boy being chased looked back at his pursuer as he headed straight for the bench. The man saw the impending collision and interrupted his exercises to lift the boy up and over at the last minute.

"Careful there," said the man.

Silence. The boys stared up, unabashedly gaping at biceps as big as their heads, the chase forgotten.

"What's the game, boys?"

One of the boys found his tongue, though his wits remained at large, "You must be really strong!"

The man chuckled. "I'm just a big oaf. Would you like to learn to be strong?"

"Yes, yes!" They both shouted.

"Alright, I'll show you. What's your name?"

"My name's Tig," the freckled boy with ruddy-brown hair said with glee.

"I'm Adrik," the slightly taller, blonde boy volunteered, stepping in front of Tig.

"Alright," said the man, "Adrik, you can help in the first exercise."

He explained the task, then Tig held his arm out and mustered all his strength to resist Adrik, but Adrik bent his arm easily.

Then the man told Tig to hold his arm straight out again and imagine that his arm was the crossbeam in the town hall, all of ten paces long, and imagine further that an endless herd of chocobos rushed in and around the beam of his arm. When Tig did so, Adrik could not bend Tig's arm, though Adrik doubled his efforts.

"I did it!" Tig exclaimed. "I got stronger just thinking about it."

"Let me try," begged Adrik.

The boys reversed. When Adrik succeeded against Tig, he shouted, "It's magic!"

The background sounds of motion and murmuring voices ceased immediately. A woman gasped. And, at that inopportune moment, Adrik's father strode into the square. "What did you say, boy?" he demanded.

"Uh," the boy mouthed.

The father wheeled on the stranger. "Who are you?" he demanded, "What have you been teaching these children?"

Delighted to explain, the stranger answered, "I've been teaching them a classic exercise in mind over matter. It's an ancient martial arts lesson. There is nothing magical about it. I assure you. Shall I demonstrate?"

"You get away from my child, you filthy Magus. You had better leave town before I call the guards."

The martial artist banished his jovial expression. He stared at the father evenly.

"South Figaro has no guards. I meant no harm. I only hoped to find pupils here to train in the martial arts, with the blessings of their families, of course."

The man addressed the boys, "Adrik, get to your chores. Tig, go home." The boys dallied. "Hup!" the father barked. They fled. The father closed on the stranger.

"You're right. We have no guards. What need have we of guards? What need of _martial arts_? The Empire is gone. The monsters have died. We won't be far behind them unless the crops grow." He stepped closer, unintimidated by the stranger's size, "Can your martial arts make the crops grow?"

"Leaving so soon?" asked the innkeeper, sounding genuinely disappointed.

"I'm afraid so. It's clear that I won't find what I'm looking for here. Don't worry. You can keep the room fee."

"I don't want your money." Then the innkeeper whispered, though there was no one else in the whole building to hear, "It is an honor to serve you, my liege."

Sabin Figaro furrowed his brow. "It's my brother who is king. What have I done to earn your loyalty?"

"You are royalty!" The innkeeper said fiercely. "The Figaros have been wise and just."

"Have been?" Sabin pressed.

The innkeeper looked away, his face reddening. "I didn't mean …"

_Didn't mean to suggest that my brother is a lecher and a machine-maker who spares no time for the weighty decisions of his kingdom?_

But Sabin kept this thought to himself and took a deep breath to cool his blood.

"I only meant… I think there is an heir who is disciplined, one who cares for his people."

"My brother cares." Sabin growled.

The innkeeper drew back. "A thousand pardons, my liege. I misspoke. I'm a fool."

"No, no." Sabin calmed himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be curt, but you misunderstand my brother." Sabin cleared his throat. "Thank you for your hospitality, but I must be on my way."

"Stay."

"What?"

"I beg your pardon. Please, my liege. We need you."

"Nonsense, what use am I?"

"We are digging irrigation canals. Streams from the mountain could be brought down to the desert. You are so strong, I only thought... Oh, I beg you, pardon me. It is labor unworthy of an heir to the throne. My mind is addled. Forgive me. Forgive me."

"No forgiveness is needed. Your thoughts are wise, but I can't stay."

"Why?" whispered the innkeeper, his head bowed, eyes on the floor.

"It is vital that I pass on my training to a new generation."

"Of course. I am wrong. My liege knows best."

Sabin went down to the harbor and found a single ship bound for Nikeah. The captain demanded a steep fare, which Sabin paid since no other ships made the crossing.

The ship had no passenger cabins so Sabin was given a hammock to set up in the largely-empty hold. Coal dust clung tenaciously to the bulkheads, but the black fuel itself remained conspicuously absent. At one time, the ship's hull would have bulged with coal bound for Nikeah. There, at the bustling port city, coal would have been traded for exotic goods from all three continents. Under steam power or with favorable weather the vessel could have returned to South Figaro within a fortnight to repeat its route. Thus Figaro had become a prosperous and happy kingdom. The people had been happy enough to tolerate a charismatic if reluctant and distracted young king.

But that was a world ago. Now none but ghosts and cave creatures claimed Narshe, the coal mining city, as home. Now the ship raised canvas to sky where once it would have trailed its smoke. Ironically, the journey to Nikeah took only a day and a half, the cataclysm having placed Nikeah on a separate continent, yet much closer to South Figaro. It was a small blessing. Nikeah had little to trade and virtually no desire for South Figaro's meager wares. And meager they were. Sabin shared the space in the hold with nothing but a handful of pelts, a few clockwork mechanisms, and the echoes of the innkeeper's words.

Figaro had long since disappeared beneath the horizon like Edgar's tunneling castle, but its grip on Sabin's emotions tightened. Sleep eluded Sabin during his first night on the ship. He rolled out of the unpleasantly swaying hammock and assumed the lotus position on the tilting deck. Even as he tried to think of a soothing mantra…

_My liege knows best._

He could sooner meditate the pelts out of existence than expunge the words from his mind. "It's this awful rocking and the taste of coal in the air," he muttered. "How can anyone expect to focus under these conditions?"

He uncoiled and climbed to the upper deck. The night watch paid him no heed as they moved about their duties. Sabin looked out at the stars over the ocean. Surely the stars remembered the old world of balance, he thought. If only time could be turned back like the winding of a clock.

Sabin thought of the clockwork mechanisms in the hold, the functions of which he could not identify, but the origin of which he had no doubts. They were his brother Edgar's handiwork.

Less than a fortnight ago he had argued with Edgar. Sabin had told him to put aside his machines and focus on the needs of the kingdom. He had been pestering his brother and Edgar had finally snapped.

"If you're so full of advice why don't you take the throne? You know Father's wishes. It's as much your right as mine."

"You chose to be king. We agreed, 'to each his own path.'"

Edgar had waved his hand dismissively.

"It was a trick coin, baby brother. Heads we choose our own path, tails we divide the kingdom. Both sides were heads. I didn't really want the crown, but I took responsibility because you couldn't handle Father's murder. You had to go play at karate in the mountains and nurse your grudge against the Empire."

"Such a burden it must have been for you! Sitting on the throne, a feast every night, engineering a ridiculous tunneling castle!" Sabin had retorted. "All while I trained. You know nothing of sacrifice."

Edgar had merely laughed while Sabin fumed. "Do you feel better now that you've gotten that off your chest, baby brother?"

"I've had enough of this."

"Where are you going? Running away again? How very mature."

Sabin shook his head, but the memory did not budge. Edgar was wrong. Seeking pupils to train was not running away, it was the natural thing to do, the only thing Sabin was good for.

"It is vital that I pass on my training to a new generation." Sabin repeated to himself.


	3. Monsters in Mobliz

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 2: Monsters in Mobliz

Dawn found Sabin still leaning against the ship's railing. The cargo vessel soon sailed into Nikeah's harbor under a clay-red sky and rising sun. Unexpectedly, the shipyards bustled with activity. From giant warehouses the sounds of hammers and saws spilled out across the water, an arrhythmic clamor. They sailed past docks cluttered with steamships rusted from disuse, but even these were crawling with shipwrights, investigating their worth.

Sabin could not imagine how Nikeah could sponsor such activity. With a sting of guilt he wondered why Figaro had not reaped the windfall as well.

Beyond these outlying stations, the main docks evidenced some activity, but it was much more in keeping with expectations. Fishermen mechanically unloaded their diminished hauls. They recalled a better time that would never return and repeated their familiar motions heavy with the weight of memory. Sabin could not help feeling relief that the majority of Nikeans suffered as they did in his homeland, but he scolded himself for such a cruel thought.

The captain walked up next to Sabin as the ship approached its berth. Without so much as a greeting he said, "I don't know what you came here for and I don't care, but I'll share an observation with you. You see the scratch-grass on that shore?"

Sabin grunted an acknowledgement, not feeling at all receptive to the captain's intrusion.

"You recall the color of the weeds on the shore we left behind? … I reckon they are about the same color. By steam, sail, or saddle you will find no greener pastures."

Then the captain walked away and resumed barking orders at his crew.

Sabin made no response except to mutter darkly about philosopher captains. He fetched his belongings from below deck and leapt to the dock as soon as it was close enough. He entered the town of Nikeah proper and found it lifeless though crowded as ever. Everyone followed their pattern like the inner workings of the clockwork mechanisms. This suited Sabin just fine. The sooner he completed his business, the sooner he could leave.

Business was not doing poorly in Nikeah. Besides the business in the shipyards, someone had hired a curiously large number of guards in tan uniforms with black and red crests. Sabin also glimpsed the flash of gold exchanging hands and more than one bulging purse, but these sights only heightened his anxiety so he shut his mind to them.

Sabin wished he could have spent his remaining gold pieces in Figaro, but he was forced to turn them over in Nikeah for a chocobo, saddle, and supplies to cross the Serpent Ridge. Before he left the port town, just inside the palisade gate, he secured the leather cylinder at his belt within easy reach. Then he lifted the chocobo's reins. The flightless, canary-yellow bird gave a _wark!_ in response and they were off.

Oceans on his left and oceans on his right. Sabin felt lighter as the chocobo trotted purposefully across rock and sand. The bird steered them wide of rock chimneys that spouted and dribbled sulfuric liquids in to foul pools. They crossed under the bleached spine of an enormous sea snake, the surprise seemingly visible on its gaping skull.

This land, the Serpent Ridge, had been the Serpent Trench back when a thousand fathoms of water covered it, but that was before Kefka had commanded the Three Statues to unleash a cataclysm. When Kefka's magic cut the world open he turned the trench inside out, raising deep sea vents to the air and beaching creatures that had never so much as seen the light of day. Kefka had envisioned the devastation as renovation; a new home for the new god of all creation.

In the face of such insurmountable odds, he himself had been a beacon of optimism, Sabin reflected wryly. Then even the wry humor drained out of him. The enemy had been clear back then, the goal; unambiguous. Now he traveled alone, his reminiscing interrupted only when his chocobo drifted towards the corpse of a foul-smelling fish forcing him to rein the bird away and give it millet from a pouch.

Not so many years ago in objective time, Sabin had traveled through the trench with a pair of odd companions in a small submersible. Cyan, the quaint, chivalrous knight and sole survivor of the Doma Massacre had traveled with him as well as the wild boy who referred to himself with a bark of Gau! Gau! Gau!

They had wrestled the controls of the submersible to keep the currents from battering them against the rocks as they hurtled towards Nikeah. From Nikeah they took a ferry to Figaro's shores and traveled onward to Narshe, arriving just in time to join the battle. There Sabin and his companions repelled the forces of the young imperial general Kefka, protected the Esper, and kept Narshe free.

Now Sabin traversed the ridge in the opposite direction from which the water had once flowed. Many things were reversed: then Mobliz had been their point of departure, now Mobliz was his destination. Then Mobliz had been a secluded border town, hearing only of war from afar. Now Mobliz was a broken, rotting city of orphans where Terra kept her orphanage.

Time can destroy, but time can also heal, Sabin reminded himself. Terra had overcome years of abuse and mental slavery, not to mention a terrifying identity crisis after the revelation of her magical parentage. If she could overcome such darkness within her own mind and find peace and purpose in Mobliz then surely Sabin could fulfill his dream of teaching martial arts to a pupil or two worthy of training.

Didn't he deserve that much? A single man had formed this land and sunk all the land around it and yet Sabin and his friends had dispatched Kefka and banished magic forever.

Sabin leaned forward in the saddle as the chocobo ascended a steep incline. The chocobo flapped its vestigial wings in frustration as part of the slope collapsed beneath it. The former sea floor was a slick mixture of mud, sand, and clay dotted with diatoms. Sabin dismounted and walked the bird carefully to the top of the ridge. The vast oceans on both sides of the land created the illusion that the Serpent Ridge grew narrower into the distance. The brown land splotched with white patches of calcium seemed to become a narrow thread as it curved east.

Sabin tried to shake the feeling that his own life had narrowed to an aimless thread, disconnected from its garment. All his friends had still had goals and direction after defeating Kefka.

There had never been any question that Terra would return to the children after the final battle, that Gau would return to the Veldt to look after the wild creature, and that Cyan would go to Maranda to start a new life with the soldier's widow with whom he had corresponded by carrier pigeon.

Edgar had his kingdom to look after. Locke and Celes had each other. Relm and Strago had Thamasa. Then there was Sabin, who thought he had a calling as a Sensei. Perhaps he should have stayed in South Figaro to wield a shovel.

Distance and time, anathema to most things, only seemed to increase Sabin's guilt and regret. His people suffered. But people suffered the world over. Weren't they too deserving of assistance? Could Sabin not better serve by doing something bigger? Was he not meant for something more?

"Ah, I wish I could have discussed this with my brother without descending into argument. Too late now. Eh, friend?"

"Wark!" The chocobo chirped at the sudden sound of his voice. It cocked its head and flicked a curious eye over him.

Terra would give him good advice. Sabin looked forward to seeing his friend.

The sure-footed chocobo carried Sabin past the sand pits and jagged outcroppings of the trench, now ridge. They passed the Isthmus of Ruin, a treacherous land bridge jutting south-west to delicately connect the ridge with the large southern continent. The Isthmus was above water, but the tides would make it impassable in a few weeks.

Terra might not wish to part with any of her beloved children and she might be equally reluctant to spare any food for Sabin. He cursed himself for not thinking ahead, for not sending word by carrier pigeon that he would be visiting and gauging her response. If his efforts in mobliz went in vain, then he might consider crossing the Isthmus to the southern continent.

The southern portion of the Serpent Ridge smoothed into a dusty plateau, spotted with patches of grass as they made their way east. They quickened their pace to take advantage of the terrain. The land gradually flattened as it curved north, eventually dropping into the ocean, and at the tip of the land clustered the remains of the town of Mobliz.

They arrived outside of Mobliz under a sunny, clear sky, alternately hot and cold as the sun's rays competed with a chilly gusting wind. Sabin dismounted with a wobble, unused to so much time in the saddle. A whispered command sent the bird off to graze. It would not venture far. Then he marched into Mobliz.

Long thin ruts criss-crossed the ground in and around Mobliz. These scars had been cut into the land, not by a plow-animal run astray, but by Kefka's light. Sabin stepped over one such rut, filled with briny sludge and walked down a muddy street between the rubble piles that had been homes. Nothing stirred in between the broken buildings. Most consisted of nothing but scrap piles; a few jagged beams protruding, and the whole mass greening with lichen like a carcass too old even for scavengers to bother with. A few structures remained standing though even these wore gaping holes or bashed-in roofs.

Something was wrong, something besides all the decay. The wind blew roughly across Sabin's ears, carrying no sounds with it. He called out, "hello" as much to hear a human sound as to get anyone's attention. There was no response, not even the howling of dogs. Where were the guard dogs? Of course, that had been a few years ago. Perhaps they had died. Perhaps no one lived here anymore.

The sight of footprints in the mud heartened Sabin. He followed the widest path to half-a-two-story building. One corner had been thoroughly annihilated; surely Kefka's Light of Judgment was to blame. The remainder of the roof formed a triangle, sagging against the ground. Sabin ducked under a gap in the remaining wall and searched the interior.

"Hello, is anyone home?"

No one responded. He descended stairs into blackness calling out as he went. No one answered, but by feeling around in the dark he found blankets, candles, and arrows. Someone had resided here recently. He ascended the stairs back to the surface, sensing a presence as he stepped outside.

"Ho there!" he called as his eyes adjusted to the light. The other did not respond. Sabin shielded his eyes. It was a little girl dragging a one-armed moogle doll in the dirt and looking up into the sky above Sabin's head.

He turned to follow her gaze and froze, disbelief pinning his limbs.

The monster loomed over the building from which he had emerged. Three white horns curved out of its head. A bandana large enough to blanket a herd of chocobos blindfolded it, but the monster opened its mouth revealing a single giant eye tucked behind lips and teeth. The bandana sagged in the places where eye sockets might have been. Murky dark drool (or were they tears?) streaked the monster's gray cheeks beneath the bandana.

Something about it looked familiar, but Sabin didn't wait to puzzle over the specifics. He shook off his surprise, grabbed the little girl, and sprinted from the monster. It roared its displeasure. The girl shrieked.

"Hush, I'll protect you," he murmured, holding her against his shoulder.

The girl sank her teeth into his ear. He yelled in surprise and pulled her away. She glared at him, but her mouth formed a smirk.

The monster pursued, gliding through the town with legs and torso hidden within a cloud of black mist. It reached out towards Sabin and the girl with arms wrapped in black fabric. Sharp points and curved blades stuck out from the arms as if the creature had been peppered with caltrops and shurikens. It gained on them.

Sabin set the girl down behind the remains of a stone fireplace.

"Stay here," he told her.

Then he tore open the leather cylinder belted at his waist, punched his right hand in, and pulled out his tiger claws.

"You keep your eye on me, beast."

"You don't belong," rumbled the monster from behind its bandana.

"I had the same thought about you. I've known a lot of monsters in my time, but didn't typically leave them alive."

Sabin rushed forward and leapt straight towards monster's eye. It turned aside and swatted with a massive hand. Sabin twisted around the blow and raked his claw across the hand as it swept by. The monster groaned in pain.

Sabin landed on a roof that shuddered alarmingly, expecting the monster to turn and face him. Instead it moved towards the fireplace where he had left the girl.

He called out to get its attention. "What hole did you crawl out of? I thought we slew all your kind." The monster glided swiftly towards the girl. Sabin cursed and made to leap after it when the roof suddenly collapsed.

Sabin landed in a cloud of choking dust. He pushed aside a beam and plowed through a flimsy wall to get outside. The monster had gone around to the far side of the fireplace and looked down at where Sabin had left the girl. The beast was too far away for him to intercept. Damn his foolishness for leaving her unprotected, he thought.

He searched frantically for something to throw. Then he rushed back through the hole in the wall and emerged with the beam. He took three strides and hurled the wood like a javelin aimed straight at its eye. The monster clamped its eye-hole shut at the last instant. The beam struck its lips.

While it held its hands over its eye, bellowing in pain, Sabin closed the distance. He stopped in the shadow of the monster, controlled his breathing, and brought his awareness to his center of gravity. He was ready to execute a Blitz technique and finish off the monster when an arrow struck his arm. Screaming in pain, his focus completely disrupted, he put a hand on the wound and instinctively dove to avoid the second volley. Peeking from behind the remains of a brick wall, he saw the archers: children firing through window frames and from behind piles of broken wood.

He couldn't begrudge children for having poor aim, but their judgment was another matter. The fools! They would only enrage the monster and put themselves in more danger. Where was Terra when he needed her?

"Stop. It's Sabin," he called out. "I'm a friend of Terra, Mama Terra."

"Kill Mama's friend!" a young voice shouted.

Thinking he must have misheard, Sabin hesitated and was nearly struck by another volley.

"Stop," he tried again, "I know Duane and Katrina. I'm friends of mama."

The young archers paused, but not from Sabin's pleas. Their eyes lifted up to the monster. Sabin looked. From behind swollen lips its eye beamed at the palm of its hand where the little girl with the moogle doll sat hugging one of its fingers.

"Papa," she squealed with delight.

The monster bent to carefully lower the girl into the waiting arms of a young man standing behind the children's fortifications. Sabin recognized him as Duane, the oldest male survivor in Mobliz. The last time Sabin had seen him Duane had been a frightened boy: barely a man and already a father, besides being responsible for dozens of orphans in a world gone mad. The past two years had hardened him. Duane looked at Sabin with disgust in his eyes.

"Mama's gone. She left before we could drive her away. We have a new protector now."

Sabin felt as if the arrow had pierced straight through his chest. Had the world once more turned inside out, this time without uttering a single sound?

The arrow had gone through his arm, missing bone and tendon. He had broken it, pulled the shaft through, cleaned the wound, and bandaged it. He could hardly remember doing any of these things, but his head throbbed in time with the pain.

The chocobo trotted steadily along, but Sabin wavered in the saddle. He felt as if some great force was uprooting the ocean floors in silence. Again the forgotten cages and dungeons of long-banished monsters broke and surfaced like old shipwrecks in a vortex, but this time was not like the last. Before, there had been a madman. The chaotic orchestra had had a conductor. Now nothing made sense. Sabin slowed the chocobo to a walk and cried without understanding anything.

Only later, when he closed his eyes and beckoned to sleep did he recall the rushing ground as he had fled. Painted on the backs of his eyes he saw the hulking monster chase him out of Mobliz. He heard himself whistle for his mount. The yellow arrow of a bird flew on blurred legs towards him. Once upon the chocobo's back, he outpaced the monster.

It stopped its pursuit, but it watched like a sentry to make sure that the threat to its charges vanished over the horizon. It was this image that froze on Sabin's consciousness: its rigid stance, its taut muscles. It had stood like a guard dog with ears turned forwards, every ounce of its being eager to be thrown headlong into any threat to its loved ones.

It looked familiar and Sabin did not know why; it haunted him.


	4. Superstitions and Delusions

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 3: Superstitions and Delusions

Sabin could have headed back to Nikeah, from there sailed to South Figaro, and from there walked to Figaro castle to present himself to his brother. He could have taken these steps, but, though magic had been banished, unseen forces yet influenced him: shame at his failure in battle, confusion and worry at the appearance of a monster and disappearance of Terra. The lightest tug on the chocobo's reins changed their direction and destiny to the southwest.

They came upon the Isthmus of Ruin at low tide and crossed to the southern continent with Sabin little more than dead weight in the saddle. Hills and gullies spiraled outward from the remains of Kefka's Tower at the center of the southern continent. They turned west, swinging wide of the ruins, hugging the coast where the hills petered out and gently rolled into the ocean. The chocobo brought Sabin to Tzen.

The bruised sky split open before Sabin reached the town's stable. A cold downpour soaked him through. Tzen's stable master had a sour disposition and took his time assessing the chocobo, determining whether the bird itself was worthy collateral against the millet it would eat and the droppings he would have to clean up. Meanwhile Sabin repeated his apologies, promised to pay him back, and shivered with cold. Finally the stable master grudgingly agreed to take charge of the chocobo without payment.

Sabin dashed through the streets to the tavern. Inside, he plunked down in from of the blazing hearth, gathering up its warmth. The place was empty save for the tavern keeper who pretended to ignore Sabin, busying himself by cleaning some glasses behind the bar.

After a while, when Sabin stopped shivering, the tavern keeper walked up behind him.

"Can I get you something?"

"I've no money."

"Well the ale tastes like piss, so we'll call it even."

Sabin smiled in spite of himself.

"There's a good man, come on over to the bar. People here call me Mace."

Mace was a sturdy bearded fellow, short and stocky. He had a friendly face.

"Sabin," Sabin replied.

"I thought I recognized you. You're the fella who rescued Tamara's boy. You and that woman did."

"That's right."

"Well don't be so damned modest!" He led Sabin over to the bar and poured him some ale. He was right. It did taste like piss.

"So what brings you back to humble Tzen?"

Sabin shrugged, "I don't know. Circumstance, I suppose."

"Here's to circumstance," Mace said, raising his own mug, "curse her wicked heart."

Sabin lifted his glass then took another swig. As he lowered his cup a pair of men loudly stomped down from the rooms upstairs. They were arguing and they carried their argument into the tavern.

"Gerdau, you're a superstitious old coot, I tell ya," said a tan wiry man with a shaved head.

"Corinth, you're just afraid to admit I'm right," Gerdau, a burly fellow with wavy gray hair, replied. "It's _his_ ghost, it is."

"First of all, it ain't no it. It's a she and she rides a chocobo. Ghosts don't ride chocobos," Corinth shot back.

"The thing _it_ rides is black. Whoever heard of a black chocobo?"

"What are you thick skulls arguing about?" Mace shouted.

Gerdau replied, "You don't want to know, little Mace, it would chill your blood and give you nightmares."

"I'll cut off your booze. How's that for a nightmare?"

They all laughed, except Sabin. Then Corinth explained. "There's something living out in the ruins of the tower. This guy," he hooked a thumb at his older, larger companion, "thinks it's a ghost, but I'm telling you it's just a crazy witch."

Something clicked in Sabin's brain. He turned to Corinth, fixing him with a desperate stare, "Does it have green hair?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, she has got green hair as a matter of fact. Who are you?"

A chill that had nothing to do with his soaked clothes ran through Sabin.

"Tell me everything you know about her."

"I don't take orders…"

"This is my good friend, Sabin," Mace interrupted.

"Right…" Corinth grumbled, but he went on, "Well, we been hunting what game we can find in this area. Have to keep making wider tracks to find any. Recently we've been hunting south of here. Not too close to the ruins mind you, but down there. We've seen something, something that ain't a critter."

"Go on."

"You ask me, there's a witch in the badlands. Gerdau here will tell you its Kefka's ghost come back to haunt the ruins, but I've seen her with my own eyes. She's no ghost. She's a green-haired witch. She has a mount, scabby beast. Who knows how it lives? Grazing on Chalk Grass, I s'pose, but not a ghost."

Sabin looked away. "What is she doing out there?" he breathed.

"By Kefka! How should I know? No creature should walk amongst those cursed ruins. The tower that is no more, it still casts a shadow on the Earth. You tell me how that's natural!"

Sabin shook his head. "I'm sorry. That was a rhetorical question, well, no it wasn't. I intend to find out the answer."

"An' how do you propose to do that?"

"I'm going to ask her."

The hunters and the tavern keeper tried to talk him down, but Sabin would hear none of it. He wasted no time. Striding out into the rain, he saddled up his chocobo, and headed south before the stable master even knew he was there.

Sabin hardly felt the rain as his mount ran south over the badlands. His recent troubles were forgotten, obscured behind the unquestionably necessary goal he had set before himself. Whatever Terra was doing in the ruins of Kefka's tower, she would have some answers and at the moment nothing was more valuable to him than that.

The tower had been gigantic, a mountain worth of stone with magic for mortar. When Sabin and his companions slew Kefka they also severed the last bond linking magic to this world. The tower had crumbled and they had barely escaped to the airship in time.

Sabin came upon the edge of the ruins and found it as the hunter had described: cloaked in shadow though the clouds had long since broken. He hadn't visited this place since the tower fell and felt great trepidation at the thought of searching the forest of semi-natural hoodoos and remnant structures of the tower. His enthusiasm had exhausted itself in the ride down and his wounded arm hurt like blazes, to say nothing of the hunger and fatigue dragging down his bones. This was a cursed place, expansive too. That became his excuse. It was too expansive to search. He would start a fire atop an exposed and visible hill on the outskirts and let Terra come to him.

He gathered brush and the driest wood he could find. He managed to start a smoky burn just as the sun set. Wood was scarce and the brush did not burn well. Sabin struggled to keep the flame alive. The stars did not come out and a bitter chill came over the land. Sabin breathed into his cold hands and stood close to the fire, but not for long as it soon demanded sustenance. Sabin's belly grumbled as well and his chocobo tentatively sampled then rejected the chalk grass that grew between the rocks.

Night dragged on. The silence of the barren land lulled Sabin towards sleep. He dragged a large dead shrub onto the fire then gave up for the night. He curled up on his side, practically hugging the fire for warmth. Dark sleep was settling into his eyes when the hair on the back of his neck began to tingle bringing him wide awake. He was being watched.

She took time to circle him twice, like a predator. He pretended to sleep. She began her approach from behind him and when she was close, she charged. Sabin tucked his feet under himself and dove aside at the last instant. He glimpsed a flash of green, Terra's unique hair, streaming atop a black chocobo as it trampled the ground where he had dozed and leapt over the fire.

"Terra!" he called out.

"He dares to speak as well as trespass! Is he addressing me?" She wheeled the bird around and came at him again. "Taste my magic, fool." She threw a rock, which he easily dodged.

"Terra Branford, stop. This is ridiculous."

"I know nothing of Terra Branford," she declared emphatically, "I'm a Magitek riding witch, wielder of Ragnarok and Atma Weapon, most feared daughter of an Esper."

She set about circling him.

"Chung chung chung. Magitek armor!" she imitated the sounds of the Empire's signature battle suit.

"Terra, it's Sabin. You know me. I was there when Ragnarok was forged. I was with you when we defeated Atma Weapon's twin on the Floating Island."

She slowed her chocobo and turned to face Sabin.

"Enough of your lies, mortal. I will slay you now. Feast your eyes upon the greatest weapons the world has ever known." She released the reins and drew from both the crossed sheaths on her back. Even in the dim firelight the blades looked chipped and rusted, nonetheless, Sabin recognized them as the swords she claimed: Ragnarok, forged of magicite, and Atma Weapon, ancient sword from the War of the Magi. The blades had not held up well since losing their magical essence, but they would cut unarmored flesh all the same.

"Terra, please. I don't want to hurt you."

She shrieked at this indignity and charged.

Sabin dodged her clumsy slash and grabbed the reins of her chocobo with his good arm. He gave the reins just enough of a jerk to turn the bird suddenly to the side. Gripping nothing but the swords, Terra flew from the saddle and crashed to the ground. Sabin rushed to her to see if she was hurt. She swung Ragnarok at him. Instinctively he dodged, disarmed her, and sent her to sleep with a jab to the neck.

She went limp and Sabin too slumped to his knees, reeling in horror at her madness and fearing that whatever had reduced her to this state might soon break him as well. He felt neither the hunger nor the fatigue that had, up until that moment, haunted him. The pain in his arm was far away, but the horror of Terra's madness piled upon his consciousness in thick lacquer waves. If he closed his eyes the shadow that poisoned this land could pull itself over him and smother the last of his sanity. He wondered if that had happened to Terra.

_Terra_… He looked at the pale sprawled form. Her splotchy pink tights were torn and smudged with dirt. Her red bodice had faded to gray. Her hair stuck out in every direction like the gnarled roots of an uprooted tree.

He realized that he had wanted more than just answers from Terra. He had wanted advice. The young girl had so impressed him that he had believed she could, in some small capacity, mentor him. Sabin had never had time to grieve after his own master, Duncan's, murder. Sabin wondered if he had ever properly grieved for his own father who had also been murdered. So much loss and now the burdens of the world had crushed Terra's spirit.

Sabin bowed his forehead to the earth and scooped dirt into his fists, squeezing them tight. No tears came.

After Mobliz, Sabin's world had been empty, his direction clouded. Now he had work to do. He got up off the ground and let the dirt drain from his hands. He had sought direction from Terra and willingly or not she had given it to him. His mission was to help her.

He bound her hands and legs, returned the swords to their sheaths, and rounded up the two chocobos. He draped Terra across the back of her black bird and, with its reins in hand, mounted his own. His chocobo gave a meek protest _Wark!_

He gently stroked its feathers.

"I'm tired too friend, but Terra needs our help. We will rest in Tzen. I promise."


	5. HalfDead Hybrid

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 4: Half-Dead Hybrid

"Now you bring me two birds to care for and still no payment." The stable master puffed his chest out and scowled at Sabin. "And look at this animal! It's filthy, covered in soot." He patted Terra's bird, showing Sabin the black dust that came off on his palm.

The stable was a modest wood building, painted reddish-brown and sheltering only eight pens. It clung to the southern edge of town near a pathetic little meadow bordered by scraggly trees. The sun had just risen above their bare branches and the light bypassed Sabin's eyes to knock around his fatigued skull like rocks in a kettle. The stable master seemed invigorated, eager to start the day with a righteous victory over an undeserving parasite.

"I'm sorry. I'll pay you back, I assure you," Sabin promised.

"Like you paid me last time before you busted into my facility and fled town?"

Terra sat against the stable wall, still bound and now gagged. As soon she had regained consciousness she had started shouting her best magitek armor imitation and boasting about how many imperial troops and Narshe guards she had killed. Sabin hoped that her madness was merely some consequence of delirium. She needed water, food, and rest, and so did he.

"I can give you two legendary swords," Sabin offered. At this Terra moaned a protest behind her gag and stomped her feet in the mud. The stable master just laughed. "Look," Sabin said, "I don't have time for this. This woman needs help." He scooped Terra up with both arms. She squirmed once in protest then slumped.

"_You_ need help, mate. These two birds are mine now. You aren't taking them anywhere unless I say so, and that isn't likely… ever. And that's not the half of it. You're also going to clean out the stable. You hear me? Don't walk away from me."

Sabin carried Terra to the tavern, out of patience, anger making his forehead throb. At the tavern he demanded a room from Mace who put his hands up defensively, but made no comment on Sabin's rudeness and lead him upstairs to an empty room with two beds. Sabin secured Terra in one bed. He removed her gag. She remained silent and eagerly drank the water he gave her. Sabin had some for himself and then passed out in the second bed.

_Burn everything._

The wind twists the clouds into ribbons. An unbearable heat sears the air. The summit of Mt. Kolts is burning. The flames part and Sabin knows that the creature who walks out is his training partner, Vargas, but in the dream he sees Terra emerge in Esper form, pink hair flying, claws flexing, a naked being of fiery energy.

Sabin hears himself speak. "I'm sorry, but you leave me no choice."

He knows what comes next. He will kill Vargas who appears as Terra.

Suddenly Duncan is there. He shakes his head. "I'm so disappointed in you Sabin."

"He left me no choice! I had to."

"Easy there, big fellow. Don't strain yourself."

The vision of Mount Kolts vanished, shunted aside by the unexpected voice.

"You've got a fever. You've got to stay in bed. Though big as you are I doubt I could force you, even in the state you're in." Now Sabin recognized the voice as belonging to the tavern keeper, Mace. Mace crouched beside his bed on the left next to a bureau with a clock on top. A fire burned in the fireplace at the foot of Sabin's bed. He felt so hot. The room swam before his eyes.

"You're talking in your sleep. You need to try to relax. The wound on your arm is infected."

Sabin looked to his right, at the second bed, the one where he had unceremoniously deposited Terra. His vision blurred again, but he didn't see any green. He blinked.

"Terra," he groaned.

"Don't worry about the witch. We took care of her."

Sabin fell away into himself, into darkness.

"Where's Terra?"

"You captured the witch. Congratulations."

"Where is she?"

"You needn't worry. We took care of her, lynched her. It was quite a spectacle. Sorry you missed it."

"No!"

Sabin woke alone. The sour stench of illness emanated from the twisted sheets wrapped around his legs. Silence caromed around inside his head. There was a memory or a nightmare on the edge of his consciousness. Had he just spoken? Had they… "Terra!"

He rolled out of bed, fumbled to the floor, kicked at the tangled sheets then shuffled on his knees over to the second bed. It was empty. He pushed himself up to his feet. The rush of blood blacked out his vision. He wavered, but steadied himself with deep breaths. Finally he looked out the window.

A crimson sun lit upon newly-constructed gallows in the town square. The simple wood structure glowed strangely in the harsh light as if it came from another world where it was commonplace to thank heroes for saving the world by ending their lives. He clenched his fists and made murderous promises. If they had so much as harmed a hair on her head he would drown Tzen in blood.

He sensed himself float to the stairs, then down into the tavern, as if he were observing someone else, someone whose actions he could not be held accountable for. Two swords lay exposed next to their sheaths on a round table in the middle of the tavern. They drew him near. A ray of light from a window caught Ragnarok and flashed in his eyes. The burning orange heart of the once-green magicite in the hilt had turned to a nearly black lump in a clear encasement. The blade was nicked but clean. He lifted it with his good arm and dragged the rusted Atma Weapon off with his other arm.

A sound came from a side room he had not noticed before. Drawn to it, he drifted. He entered a small storeroom at the top of a staircase. He descended. At the bottom were two doors: one opened into a dark room, smelling of alcohol, the other was closed. He held still and listened. A person behind the door made small sounds; conversation? Or was it humming? It sounded like a magic spell. The violence left his body in one sweep, replaced by desperate hope. "Terra?" he called out.

The voice went silent, but he was sure it was her. He dropped the swords and kicked the door. A wave of nausea swam up from his belly. He ignored it and kicked again. He kicked until the wood split and the door swung inward.

She was curled up against a wall. She hung her head and said nothing as he leaned in the door frame and let his body decide whether or not to puke. His body deigned not to puke and instead treated him to wrenching pain and piercing chills.

There was no time to let it pass. Doubled over, Sabin shuffled to Terra. He touched her gently on the arm. "It's Sabin," he whispered. "We're getting out of here." She barely stirred. He put his hands under her arms and helped her to her feet. She felt insubstantial.

Terra's eyes landed on her swords. With sudden vigor she lunged forward to grab them. Sabin could not have restrained her if he had tried.

She stood slowly, lifting both blades point up, parallel to her body. With the weapons in hand, she seemed to gain solidity as if some kind of energy flowed into her, propped up her joints, and drove the frailty from her lithe body. Her head turned slightly though she did not look directly at Sabin.

Did she even remember who Sabin was? Did she remember herself? He wondered if long term side effects of the slave crown had finally manifested.

"Follow me," she said. He nodded. With that, initiative was transferred.

Did Terra want blood? Vengeance? Sabin didn't care. He winced at a malodorous smell that bubbled out of his throat. Pain filled him to the brim and overflowed, cascading forward and backward through time until the physical pain became one and the same with his shame and worthlessness, with his brother and Vargas. There was no Sabin, only a vessel for suffering remained. The vessel and Terra ascended the stairs.

In the tavern Terra ran to and fro like a nest-building bird. She strapped on the two sheaths and then searched the cupboards for food and other supplies. She shoved what she found into a canvas sack she had pilfered from a cabinet. Sabin got the message. They were leaving. He ascended the stairs to the second floor as if they were the final ascent to Mount Kolts's summit to retrieve his boots. When he returned he caught Terra talking to herself in a hushed, but angry whisper. She silenced herself when she saw him and handed off the bag she had filled, then she drew her swords.

Seeing her like this, hefting these weapons with surprising strength, her hair a wild tangle of green reaching out like the tendrils of a strange sea creature, her green eyes lidded and all her facial features tapering down towards her narrow chin, itself a kind of down arrow indicating her position at the bottom, unable to sink further, uncaring how low she might bring the rest of the world, Sabin felt a glimmer of doubt. Should he protest, stop her before she did something that could not be undone? A throbbing ache began at his temples and he remembered the world outside. He felt its cruel expanse beyond the thin tavern walls. This world would kill them and forget their very existence.

"I'm sorry," Sabin blurted out. "I didn't know that they would try to hurt you."

She looked on him with a mixture of pity and disgust. "I believe you, but my swords don't." She cackled at her joke while shivers ran up and down Sabin's spine. Then with a grimace she ordered: "Open the door. We don't have time for this."

Sabin eased the tavern door open slowly and peeked out to survey the streets. Direct sunlight stung his nerves. He blinked rapidly, glanced north and saw no one. He looked south and found himself staring straight into Mace's face.

"Sabin! What are you doing? You should be resting. I… hurgh!"

Sabin grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him bodily inside. Terra was upon him in an instant, crossing her swords and placing Mace's head between them like pruning shears ready to lop off a tree limb.

"Terra, no!" Sabin protested.

"Shut up. And you," she looked at Mace, "lead this witch to the stable."

Mace moved slowly towards the door with his neck between the blades. Sabin watched dumbly with his arm stuck out indicating, 'stop'.

"Sabin, I'm your friend," Mace pleaded.

"Shut up." Terra barked. She pressed the blades against Mace's neck. Sabin found no more protests forthcoming, but vomited loudly on the tavern floor. He wiped his face with the back of a trembling hand. His beard had grown in and felt damp now with half digested porridge and stomach acid.

Sabin recovered himself. Mace led the way outside. Immediately an old woman screamed at the sight of them, dropped the basket she had been carrying and scurried back up the street.

"Faster," Terra commanded.

Mace shuffled his short legs a bit faster. Sabin felt as if they were crawling to the stable. Nonetheless he struggled to keep pace, one hand jammed against his stomach as if he could quash the pain there.

They headed downhill towards the sun. The ground was damp and rutted with lingering puddles from a recent storm. The buildings pressed close around them. Most were two stories high. Tzen had been a wealthy, if claustrophobic, town long ago. Their shadows stretched long behind them like a trail for the town guard to follow. Finally the odor of bird droppings wafted up the street.

A bell rang frantically back near the center of town. Someone had sounded the alarm. Moments later people began spilling out into the streets with hammers, shovels, hot pokers, pitchforks, and other miscellaneous improvised weaponry. It took less than a moment for all eyes to turn towards the large muscular man standing next to the green haired woman with two swords bracketing the tavern keeper's neck.

"The witch! Get her!"

A dozen townsfolk, with more running down the streets, closed in from all sides. The better-armed and bloodthirsty came running while those with less battle enthusiasm lagged behind. Sabin had fought off larger and better-trained hordes than this, like when he was caught in the Imperial army camp besieging Doma castle. Sabin was unmatched in single-combat and knew that the key to group combat was to take control of the situation so that it becomes a series of one-on-one fights.

The lessons came readily to mind. Lesson one: don't let your opponents decide when to engage you. Instead select one of the nearest foes and go to him. Always take the initiative. Lesson two: let your opponents provide your weapons for you. Use the momentum of your first opponent to throw him at others and buy more time. Then, simply repeat one and two.

Sabin knew all the strategies and the techniques to execute them, but theory and practice felt miles apart in his condition. His vision swam as his blood pressure rose, his ears rang with the slightest sound, and his muscles protested every movement. He breathed deeply and tried to center himself, but pain stabbed through him. If he could not overcome it, the next stabbing pain might actually be from an actual stab wound.

Suddenly Terra let out a piercing laugh.

Even the fierce-looking burly man with a steel pitchfork, who had been leading the charge, paused.

Terra pushed Mace to the ground and put a boot on his neck to keep him down. Then she raised both swords aloft.

"Prepare to taste my magic, fools!" She began to loudly cast a spell. The words for Cyclone spilled from her lips.

Sabin himself stumbled away from her in fear. Cyclone would not distinguish friend from foe. He too would be swept into the sky and battered by windswept debris before being dashed to the ground. Terra spoke with such conviction that he momentarily forgot that magic was gone, had been banished by his own hands two years ago.

The townsfolk turned and fled with cries of, "By Kefka, spare us!"

Terra whined a mock imitation, "Ohhh, by Kefka, spare us!" then she winked at Sabin, which did not comfort him at all. She poked Mace to his feet with Ragnarok. They ran to the stable with Sabin struggling to keep up.

The stable master was pacing outside the stable, a worried look scrunching his face. He paused in surprise when he saw the three of them coming. He hurled commands to stop, and demanded to know what was going on. Sabin, seized by sudden energy, knocked him to the ground with a single blow. It was an uncharacteristically sloppy, violent strike which rendered him unconscious. It would leave a mark.

Terra put her teeth together in a sadistic smile. Sabin looked away, the nausea and shame redoubling within him. Terra put a foot on Mace's back and kicked him towards the stable's broad doors. She and Mace entered. Sabin closed the doors behind them pitching the room into darkness.

"Don't try anything." Terra said. She kicked Mace again for good measure. "Get on your knees." In the darkness Sabin felt certain Mace would die. He found it hard to care.

"Sabin, take two chocobos outside. I'll be right out."

"Terra… you remember my name?"

"Don't be stupid. Just do as I say."

So he did. He saddled up two birds and took them by the reins. He thought they were the birds that he and Terra had come in on, but it was hard to be sure in the dark.

Mace began whispering Sabin's name over and over again.

"I'm not deaf." Terra said.

Mace went silent. Sabin opened the doors casting light on Terra standing rigidly with two swords bracing Mace's neck. Sabin shut the doors behind him, turned, and saw an angry crowd shielding their eyes against the sun, wielding sundry dangerous implements, and marching down the street towards him. They were lead by uniformed swordsmen wearing tan with black and red crests that Sabin could not make out. Something about them seemed familiar, but this was neither the time nor place nor condition for ferreting out an idle memory.

"Terra! We have a problem," Sabin yelled over his shoulder while slinging the sack of supplies over a saddle. He pulled at the straps to secure it. From inside the stable came the unmistakable sound of a heavy body falling to the ground. Sabin dropped his hand from the straps and placed his forehead into the chocobo's feathers. He felt as if he himself had murdered Mace and maybe he should let the crowd kill him, end the pain now, swiftly.

Then a rock hit him, striking his bicep squarely on the wound that had been infected. He roared with rage. The chocobos would have fled, but he gripped their reins tightly. He turned hate-filled eyes on the mob. They had paused, some with rocks in drawn-back arms, paralyzed by his outcry. Sabin shifted his feet into a fighting stance. His fighter's instinct kicked in and he singled out who would be the first to die, a swordsman in the front row who looked to be the least green of the bunch.

Terra threw open the stable doors producing gasps, screams, and a few cries of "witch!" The mob drew back in fear.

Sabin uttered his own curse at the sight of her. "By Kefka!"

She sheathed her swords without bothering to clean them. She mounted the slightly sooty bird in front of her. It didn't seem to mind that her clothes were soaked in blood, though Sabin's bird gave a start.

The mob lurched forward. The swordsmen raised their swords. The peasants flung rocks, hammers, and other hard objects.

Sabin put a foot in his bird's stirrups, struggled to pull himself up. His bird _warked_ and scowled. It ducked and squatted as a rock sailed over its head. This lowered its body just enough for Sabin to swing himself into the saddle. The bird launched into a sprint, kicking up a spray of mud into the onrushing crowd.

Sabin and Terra headed south, though Sabin did not realize this at first. He wrapped his arms around the neck of his chocobo and lay against it with his head down. The illness tortured him constantly, the pain had diminished slightly, but what remained showed no sign of ceasing. With each breath he inhaled dust and the bird musk that stunk of droppings, but the sulfurous smell that occasionally erupted from inside of him was worse.

The Isthmus of Ruin would be under water by now, cutting off the routes to Mobliz or Nikeah. The town of Albrook, due south, was the only other settlement on the continent. Terra lead the way and Sabin's bird diligently followed, but when Sabin lifted his weary head to glimpse the last of the sun's light fading beneath a shadow that fell from no object, he realized that Albrook was not her intended destination. He called out to her to slow.

His chocobo drew up next to hers and again he thought he heard her silence a conversation she held only with herself.

"Terra, we should go to Albrook." He felt rather dim making this plain statement, but knew of nothing else to say.

"Not Albrook. Tzen will have sent warning by carrier pigeon. Albrook will be expecting us," she replied, sitting erect in her saddle with carmine, wind-dried blood caking her clothing.

She was right and he had not expected to be faced with such stark rationality.

"Why did you attack me?" he asked.

She kept her eyes ahead and answered evenly.

"I didn't want to remember myself and I was afraid, afraid you were not real. Think of it. The last thing I expected was to see you out here in the ruins. If you were a hallucination that meant I was truly losing my mind, but you're real. I know that now. Locked in the tavern cellar, I had a lot of time to think, to remember things that the ruins let me forget."

Sabin nodded solemnly, understanding what he heard, but also understanding that there was much more to hear.

"Why did you come here?" Terra asked.

Sabin replied immediately, the answer well practiced on his tongue. "I wanted to complete Duncan's work, to train new pupils as Duncan trained me. So I went to Mobliz."

Terra raised an eyebrow and studied his face. "You thought an emaciated orphan would make a better black belt than any of the children in Figaro or Nikeah? Why did you really come?"

"I… There were difficulties in Figaro and Nikeah, well, I hardly know anyone there." Why hadn't he sought a child in Nikeah? It would have made sense. Sabin could not answer his own question.

The shadows deepened and a cold wind gusted from the direction of the ruins. Sabin realized he had been sidetracked.

"Terra, we shouldn't go to the ruins."

"Oh? Not 'don't go' or 'I refuse to go', but 'shouldn't'? So you're judging me, is that it? You can't imagine what it has been like for me." She burst into tears adding perplexity to Sabin's catalog of afflictions.

Her sobs gradually ran their course. Then she said, "I didn't kill the tavern keeper. I killed the other chocobos. They won't be able to pursue us."

"Oh, Terra."

She smiled for only a moment, but it shined in the gathering gloom, because it contained a hint of real amusement, a hint of the innocent child buried deep within her. "You say that as if the lives I took were worse."

Sabin laughed, but his mirth was as brief as Terra's smile. "In a way, they were. You took innocent life when a person who would have lynched you was beneath your blade. You certainly aren't insane, killing rationally like that. What are you then?"

She turned away from the sun and looked into the heart of the shadow cast by the fallen tower. Her innocence already buried miles deep she said, "I'm a half-dead hybrid."

Sabin argued that they should camp at the edge of the ruins rather than deep within the shadow. They would be less safe from the threats Terra feared, but more safe from the unknowns Sabin feared. Terra could not deny that her threats had much ground to make up on foot, what with their dead chocobos, so she made this small concession.

Sabin made a fire while Terra rummaged through their supplies and took out some bread and water. They ate and drank.

Terra spoke softly, letting her thoughts wander. Sabin listened to her disturbing words as passively as he could. She had spent months alone in the ruins weaving illusions of grandeur around herself. Her recent capture and imprisonment seemed to have disabused her of these notions, but he would not risk disturbing the tight-rope upon which her sanity balanced.

"Kefka was surely mad in his quest for absolute power," she said, "but, I think, when he achieved the pinnacle of his strength, when he constructed his tower from which to judge the world and built his beam of light on top to cut apart continents and burn lives like parchment, I think he had an epiphany.

"His failure was in drawing back in fear from the void of the epiphany. I think he should have gone further, cut deeper into the land. In his short time as a god he unleashed Phunbaba and the Eight Dragons from their tombs within the earth. He should have cut to the core and exorcised all the evil. Then he should have scoured the surface of life to give the planet a fresh start.

"Instead he wallowed in his own depression, occasionally reflecting it outward to burn a village, half-heartedly cleave a few families.

"Ironically, he failed to extinguish his own hope. All the destruction. He wrought it with the sole purpose, not of extinguishing hope, but of finding some that he could not snuff. He found that hope in us, and we killed him. Now look at us..."

Sabin rubbed his chin, feeling the beard, now crusty with the dried contents of his stomach. Together they certainly did not cut the image of strapping heroes.

Terra gestured at him with the tip of her sword, she hardly ever released the hilt. "You never answered my question. Why did you come here?"

"I told you, I sought pupils."

"Not why did you go to Mobliz, which still makes no sense, but why did you come to the ruins?"

"I was searching for you!" Sabin exclaimed as if the answer was obvious.

Terra smiled coquettishly. "Maybe you were searching for me ever since you left Figaro."

Sabin blushed, coughed, and turned away. "Terra, you mistake me. I… You're like a little sister to me."

She frowned then said with dead seriousness, "I'm an only child."

"You don't have to be alone. Of all the places you could have gone, why the ruins?"

"I had many reasons. My earliest memories are of Kefka. Did you know that? I was just a little girl when the Empire put me on the battlefield and Kefka was my commander. I didn't hate him. I didn't know what I was doing.

"This is also the last place I was whole. You can't imagine what it was like. I lost half my soul when magic fled the world. Kefka's tower of brick and magic collapsed, but I, the child of Esper and human, somehow survived. I thought maybe some remnant of magic survived here in the ruins. So I came searching for my better half.

"The Sealed Gate must be here somewhere. It was on the land that Kefka raised into the sky and used to construct his tower. Imagine if I could open it just once more…"

Terra stared into the fading flames in the fire pit. Silence stretched on. Sabin slouched against the flat side of a boulder, feeling ill though his sickness had abated. He felt full of Terra's words, but unable to digest them.

"Did you find…" he trailed off.

"What? Magic? No." She laughed, but Sabin found nothing funny about it. "Why? Are you scared? Big Sabin with all his strength. I'm the one who should be scared. I'm defenseless. I'm nothing any more. Half human and half, literally, nothing. You have no idea how it feels."

Sabin knew better than to protest, but he did know. He knew exactly how it felt to be worthless. His thoughts flashed back to South Figaro: no pupils to train, and then to Mobliz: monsters he could not defeat.

"What happened in Mobliz?" He asked.

Terra tossed a stick on the fire then sought the comfort of Atma Weapon in her palm. "The same thing that happened in Tzen; superstitious people got rid of a powerless witch."

Sabin frowned. "There's got to be more to it than that."

"A bit," Terra replied. "Shortly after we defeated Kefka, after I landed in Mobliz, things were fine. The children were happy to see Mama Terra and I was happy to be with them.

"Then the illness came. The children began to get sick. They asked me to heal them, to use my magic. I tried to explain that I couldn't anymore, but they didn't understand. Duane and Katarin's baby got sick and died. Katarin was practically comatose with grief. Duane was furious. He turned the children against me. He told them that I was practicing evil magic against them.

"I tried to use cure magic. I tried harder than I have ever tried before. I uttered the words and made the signs. Of course nothing came of it. I got angry and desperate. I started practicing black spells just to see if they would work. I tried to cast Doom on an insect, Break on a chair. I couldn't so much as cast Bio on a moldy slice of bread. One of the children caught me in the middle of Bio and ran to tell Duane. That's when I fled the town."

Sabin wanted to believe her. He wanted to comfort this girl for whom he felt much fatherly affection, but she was not a girl anymore. She absentmindedly scratched dry blood from her clothes. Sabin wondered if it was all a production: the tears, the sob story. Her delusions of grandeur had disappeared too quickly to be replaced by frailty. Did she believe him unaware of the monster in Mobliz?

"Terra, I went there, to Mobliz. Tell me the whole story."

"That is the whole story! Do you think this is easy for me?"

"Terra, tell me where the monster came from."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Sabin scrutinized her face. He wanted to believe her, and for this reason did not trust his own judgment. He tried a new tack. "There is a monster in Mobliz, an ancient creature for all appearances. The children have befriended it or it has befriended them. It protects them from trespassers. I fought with it and was defeated."

Terra smirked then controlled herself. Sabin suspected she was pleased at the thought of the monster besting him, making him feel weak like her.

"I thought we killed all the monsters. It is news to me that one escaped our holocaust." She looked down then asked casually, "Did the monster use magic?"

Sabin shook his head.

"No," Terra said. "Of course not. Are you sure it wasn't just an animal?"

"I know a monster when I see one," Sabin said indignantly.

"But without magic, how can it survive?"

"I could ask the same of you?" He regretted his words immediately.

They said no more. The fire dwindled and they lay still though peaceful sleep eluded them both.


	6. Olde Acquaintence in Albrook

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 5: Olde Acquaintance In Albrook

Sabin tossed and turned uncomfortably. Chills played across his body like mice in the walls. He sought sleep so eagerly that he was surprised to wake and realize that he had caught it.

He remained motionless with eyes closed, savoring the sensation of heaviness in his body. His stomach no longer churned. He heard Terra speak to herself nearby. Whether she was awake or asleep, he did not know.

"Where are you from? Tell me, magic monster. Where?" she murmured.

She began to hum or perhaps mumble. It sounded like a spell. Sabin cracked his eyes open. He faced east. The sun should have blinded him, but instead he saw only shadowed bricks and gravel, and in the distance, a forest of hoodoos, pillars supporting nothing. He shivered. Terra's mumble definitively became a poem, repeating the same lyrics over and over. The words changed in Sabin's ears as he listened.

"To which to walk to wear

Despair despair despair

To witch to walk to where?

Despair despair despair…"

Sabin had never heard it before but the tune bore the mark of Kefka so thickly he had no doubt that the madman had been its origin… or so he told himself so that he did not have to consider the alternative: that Terra had invented it herself.

He shifted to roll over, trying to make it look natural as if he was still asleep. The tune ceased immediately. Sabin yawned and squinted.

"Were you saying something?" he asked.

"Nothing. Just a silly song." She fiddled with her sleeve where the old cloth was brown with blood stains. She was sitting upright, her legs tucked under her. "I'm ready to head to Albrook as soon as you are," she said.

Sabin sat up, massaged his skull. It didn't like being lifted off the ground. "What?"

"I said I'm ready to go to Albrook."

Sabin considered cracking a joke about Terra reading his lines, but it was too early. He played the skeptic instead. "Even assuming we can sneak into Albrook and steal a boat, where do we go from there?"

She shrugged nonchalantly, plucking a rock off the ground and tapping it against other nearby rocks, "I don't know. We can hug the coast, follow it along."

There were two ways to follow the coast from Albrook: west, back to Tzen, or east, to Mobliz.

Mobliz, he thought. Maybe Terra had not known about the monster, but now she sought it as a link back to the magic she had lost, the same way she had sought the Sealed Gate in the ruins. Sabin rubbed his temples. His mood was not conducive to theorizing or the type of verbal sparring that would be needed to get the truth from Terra, but he longed to quit this land.

"Fine. Let's go."

They gathered together their meager supplies and departed. As they distanced themselves from the shadowed wastes, the low morning sun swam hazily into view.

"There is no way to hide your muscle," Terra said, her chocobo trotting along, "but as for me, they will expect a green haired woman." She winked at Sabin, who found her scheming unnerving.

"I understand," he replied, and he did understand now that the sun warmed his body and his head had cleared: Terra had renewed her quest for magic. She trotted her bird ahead of his, sitting easily in the saddle, her head held high with newfound energy. Sabin stared at her, but divined nothing more by studying her back.

Before Kefka's death even he had been a powerful magi. Sabin and his friends had been enriched by an accumulation of magicite greater than any the world had seen in a thousand years. Power had throbbed within his veins. He shuddered at the thought. Magic had put the world in its current state: not a single upright tree as far as the eye could see, just an expanse of scruffy brush and dirt undulating with the ridges of the spiral centered on Kefka's now-ruined tower.

Wark! His chocobo squawked. It cocked its head to eye its rider.

Unconsciously Sabin had been pulling on the reins. He released them and patted the chocobo's feathers.

He sighed. I'm worrying needlessly. Magic is gone. I have nothing to fear. Best to work with Terra and deal with the question of Mobliz later.

He called out to Terra. "I know someone who might be expected in Albrook."

Sabin restrained his chocobo to a leisurely pace. They had enough food for a few days and he needed the time to recover. Terra, impatiently trotting her mount ahead, kept doubling back so as not to lose him.

In less than a week they set up camp a few miles outside of Albrook, beyond the sight of any watchtowers. Terra changed into new clothes she had stolen from Mace, then Sabin took the cleanest, sharpest blade they had (also stolen) and carefully used it to shave her head. Terra shifted the pale green strands, the color of a shallow sea, between her fingers.

Sabin told her, "Your name is Corinth. You have a friend named Gerdau. Both of you are game hunters."

"What else?"

"That's all I know," Sabin said.

"Well at least it will be easy to remember."

"I can't do much more without a better blade or risk cutting your head off."

Terra reached up to feel her scalp. Short green stubble, looking more than a bit like moss, remained. "It will be fine," she said. She stood and walked over to her chocobo. Then she bent down and rubbed her head in its feathers. The bird looked at her as if she were crazy. Sabin sympathized with it, but the soot that rubbed off from the chocobo darkened the stubble on Terra's head.

She presented her pate for inspection. "Better?"

"Actually it is."

Sabin stepped back to get the full picture. With a shaved head, doeskin leggings, and a loose leather jerkin over a cotton shirt she was nearly unrecognizable. Her face still looked girlish, but now that he looked closely he saw signs of wear on her features that he had not noticed before: darker skin under her eyes and her cheeks, though smooth, no longer resembled porcelain.

"We'll have to tie down the slack in these clothes. They are too big for you," he said.

"You didn't bring your sewing supplies? I'm disappointed."

Sabin put on a smile at the jibe, but his mind had already moved on to new worries. "Listen, I'll get as close to town as possible tomorrow. Try to signal if you run into any trouble."

"I know the plan."

"I'll swim in to the harbor after dark. We'll meet up there."

"I said, I know," she snapped.

Sabin shut his mouth and kept it closed. She had best control her tongue tomorrow. He had no desire to rescue her again.

Brush and tumbleweed clung to the dark dry soil that rolled along in little waves towards the horizon like a paralyzed ocean. Dust devils kicked up loose dirt. Terra felt the grit on her teeth, spat once, and started breathing through her nose. The sky suggested rain, but not yet, maybe not for a long time.

She could bring rain if she had her magic back, but she would not. She'd withhold it from this land that had given her nothing but pain.

Terra's thoughts flew far ahead of her and the chocobo beneath her. There was a monster in Mobliz. Sabin would never tell a serious lie. He could prank and jest, but his face would not hold back a lie with gravity. Therefore, a real monster walked the land in Mobliz. And monsters could not exist without magic. Therefore Terra must get to Mobliz.

The chocobo she rode veered east. She pulled the reins to correct it and the bird warked angrily. She rode Sabin's chocobo, since the soot on her own bird would be a dead giveaway. She got the sense that his chocobo didn't like her, but carried her merely out of a sense of professionalism. Fine, she thought, she didn't like it either. She much preferred her own bird. It had been a wild chocobo, or, more likely, a stray like herself.

A squat palisade, poked into view as Terra crested a hill. _Albrook_, she thought, and from there to Mobliz, and from Mobliz to magic. She pushed away thoughts of her chocobo. What was one more lost friend? It was just an animal anyway. That was the only reason it had remained loyal to her.

Albrook sank into the terrain as Terra descended a slope. Now she guided the bird over the crests of the highest rises so she would not surprise the guards of Albrook. When she drew near, a guard called out, "Ho there!"

The guard, shaded by a wide brimmed hat, leaned out over the wall with a crossbow in hand. Terra pulled the reigns to bring the chocobo to a halt.

"Ho!" She responded in the deepest tone she could project. "I am Corinth from Tzen. I'm hunting fugitives, a witch and accomplice. I seek supplies to continue my pursuit."

"We didn't expect anyone from Tzen so soon. Alright, come in, but slowly. The captain of the guard would like to take a look at ya."

Terra dismounted and led the chocobo up between the doors of the open gate. Inside, two archers and a swordsman stood by, their weapons ready.

"That'll do," said the swordsman. "Stay right there."

Terra stopped.

A broad shouldered man popped out of a two-story brick building with a sword and shield emblem above the door. He scurried hastily down the cobbled street towards Terra and the guards. He wore a dusty tabard with a captain's sigil thrown on over rusted armor. A shock of necklaces bounced around his neck, clinking on his armor. As the captain ran he fumbled to take ring after ring from a pouch at his hip and slip them on to his fingers until Terra hardly believed he could flex his fingers at all. All these accoutrements, Terra knew, were magic charms long impotent.

Terra kept her face stony, secretly delighted by the fear she, the witch of the badlands, induced.

Red faced and breathless, the Captain came to a halt in front of Terra. He peered at her nervously before asking, "Corinth?"

"That's right."

"Where's your partner?"

"Gerdau? He's in Tzen. We only had one chocobo." 

"Indeed, about that…"

"It escaped from its pen. We didn't find it until after we sent the pigeon to you. Lucky fella, to escape the nasty witch." Terra reached up and scratched the bird behind the neck, quite enjoying this theater.

"Right," the captain muttered, nodding his head and seeming to cross an item off a mental checklist. He walked a wide circle around Terra, inspecting her from every angle. Her palm suddenly itched for Ragnarok. She had left it behind with Sabin in case the message from Tzen had specified that the witch carried two swords. Atma weapon remained strapped across her back, but it would be hard to reach quickly.

The captain completed his circle and arrived back in front of her. "What more can you tell us about the fugitives?"

Terra shrugged, "You got the carrier pigeon message? Not much more we know. The witch has got green hair, carries two old swords, and rides a dirty chocobo. She's been seen in the shadow of the tower often. The man is large, muscular, blonde hair with rattails. His name is Sabin, though he won't use that name obviously. He used to be a hero to the people of Tzen."

"Huh. Well, I didn't know that last bit, but it hardly helps us find him. I doubt those two will come near here."

"Well, if they can't find food in the wastes they may get desperate. I hunted game in this area before I hunted these two, and I honestly can't say which will be the harder task." Terra suppressed a smile at her clever improvisation.

"True, true. Thank you for your time. I won't postpone you any longer. Albrook is always eager to assist our neighbor to the north." The captain bowed slightly then hurried off. Apparently the fugitives were not the only urgent matter in Albrook.

Albrook hadn't changed much since she had last passed through. It was a port town to the core, stretching along the coast without penetrating far inland, as if no one in the town accepted anything but riverfront property.

Terra strode down the main walkway. Waves crashed and churned at the base of the three story cliff to her right. Nervous of the cliff, she walked close to the buildings though she disliked the way they stacked on top of one another and seemed to lean out towards the sea as if drawn by magnetism.

She decided that Corinth too would not like the cliff. What else? Corinth would want to refresh himself, she thought. She headed for the tavern figuring that this would also be as good a place as any to inquire regarding a ship.

The tavern was not as she remembered. Ill-maintained, it had become dank and dim. The air inside concentrated the stinging smell of sea salt. A lanky bartender with a beak nose wiped the counter with a rotten rag saturated with beer and worse.

"Something to refresh a traveler," Terra said, stepping up to the bar.

The bartender met her eyes and held her gaze for a moment longer than she was comfortable with before turning silently to fix her a drink. She looked around the bar for possible threats. The dark corners hid much, but she heard two distinct groups, both men speaking softly among themselves, both well-armed. Terra listened more closely, but they hid their conversations well. She heard only the sound of rats running across the rafters and weapons clinking in the shadows.

A loud thump startled her as the bartender slammed a mug down on the counter. Somehow he had moved silently even as she listened to all the other sounds in the bar.

"Thanks," she grunted. "You're busy. Who's this crowd?"

The bartender worked at a bit of food in his teeth as if he hadn't heard the question then said offhand, "Soldiers and mercenaries."

A wave of fear swept through her. She looked down at her drink, tried to act casual. "Oh? They here for the fugitives?"

"What fugitives?"

Terra breathed a sigh of relief and wondered about the bartender. For a bartender, the man was rather naïve. Terra took the opportunity to swell her legend. "The badlands witch was captured in Tzen, but she used her magic to escape, killed nearly all the chocobos in Tzen on her way out. She travels with a big guy named Sabin. They are very dangerous."

The bartender picked at his teeth again. Apparently he hadn't dislodged the food on the first try. "Huh," he said, "never heard of a witch in the badlands. Should I be worried or does she just kill birds?"

Terra seethed. "She has green hair and rides a black chocobo. She is a killing machine and she communes with Kefka's ghost. I'm a great game hunter, but she has evaded me."

"Have you met Gerdau and Corinth?" the bartender asked, suddenly interested. "They hunt in this area."

Terra delayed by raising her glass. She had said too much. The beer burned her throat. "Never heard of them." She changed the subject, "you never said what the soldiers and sell-swords are doing here."

"You don't know about the soldiers? They must have arrived in Tzen by now. They're _imperial_ soldiers."

Terra's stomach clenched and she did not think it was due to the beer. She had not thought about the empire in a long time. The emperor had killed her mother with his bare hands and placed the slave crown on her head to use Terra on the battlefield, but he was long dead and the empire's evils had paled in comparison to Kefka. In less than a year the empire had gone from the cusp of world domination to the imperial capital being razed to the ground and the emperor suing for peace. Terra had been responsible for much of that reversal, but she realized that this would be a bad time to boast more to the bartender.

An image flashed to mind, an image of the mob in Tzen. There had been soldiers in the mob wearing black and red, imperial colors.

"Oh, imperial soldiers," she said casually. "You should have said so in the first place. I thought you meant these were some other soldiers. Of course the imperials are in Tzen, not that it did us any good against the witch."

He smiled knowingly at her. She didn't like that at all.

"And the mercenaries?"

"The mercs are just passing through. They say they're monster killers."

She coughed loudly at the mention of monsters, cleared her throat, and "ahem"ed deeply. Chairs shifted as patrons turned to look towards her, but she was too preoccupied to notice. Sabin wasn't the only one that believed monsters had returned. That must mean that magic has returned. It should be impossible, but then again, monsters and imperial soldiers should be impossible too. It was as if the world was reverting back to the way it had been before the cataclysm. Except this time the witch was no naïve young slave.

The bartender flashed a knowing grin again. This brought Terra out of her reverie.

"I know something about you," he said.

"I don't see how you could," she replied, judging how fast she could draw her sword across his neck and be out the door.

"It's written all over your face. You're something special, but not one to envy. You're not actually impressed by this witch and you've seen real monsters before, things people weren't meant to see, not like most of this crowd. They say they're monster killers. They've known hardship to be sure, but the most killing they've done is probably a few slit throats in a back alley for some quick coin, with one exception." He held up a finger for emphasis. "You should meet him." Then the bartender called out into the dark. "Hey, old knight. Come over here for a minute."

Terra stared straight ahead, willing the old knight to not be who she thought it was.

One of the mercenaries said, "Mr. Thou, they're talkin' to ya."

She suppressed a groaned. It was him. Ever the honorable knight, he wouldn't lie for her. Her cover was blown. The return of magic meant nothing if she was lynched by ignorant sell-swords.

A chair scraped across the floor and a body in armor and heavy boots stepped across strained floorboards. The body sank onto the stool next to Terra with as much relief as a body carrying the woe of a lifetime can feel.

"Everyone calls this one Mr. Thou," said the bartender. "Mr. Thou, meet… What's your name?"

"Terr…an," Terra croaked. She forced her head to turn ever so slightly, forced herself to look into Cyan's eyes. Could he read her eyes? Could he tell that she needed him to forget his damnable honor for one moment?

In the gloom his eyes were dark slits hidden beneath bushy eye brows and crinkled skin. "Terran," Cyan said, "a long time hath passed".

"So you two know each other?" asked the bartender.

"Correct," said Cyan, "We art olde comrades from the war."

"I knew it," said the bartender, his powers of divination confirmed, "Though I wouldn't have guessed Terran here was old enough to have fought…" he lowered his voice so the imperial soldiers couldn't hear, "…in the rebellion."

Cyan turned his gaze directly on Terra. "No, thou wouldst not assume so, but Terran is full of surprises. Let us step outside, olde friend. We should share stories in private."

Terra's voice caught in her throat. She nodded.

They stepped out into an overcast sky, yet it was bright compared with the inside of the tavern. Terra shielded her eyes as she looked up at Cyan.

He still wore his old armor, the navy blue breast plate of Doma. His long sword hung at his side. He kept it sharp and clean, quite unlike her own blades. Steely gray hair now tinged his eyebrows and mustache and ran through his pony tail. He stood tall with impeccable posture though his movements were no longer as steady as Terra had remembered.

He stared straight ahead and said simply, "Let us converse, if it pleases thee. I shall not reveal thine identity."

Terra dipped her head in acknowledgement. "Thank you for that. I was afraid your honor would demand that you reveal me."

Cyan smiled a fatherly smile. Despite the words he spoke next, Terra was filled with a sudden violent hatred. Sabin had also looked on her that way, as if she were still a child, the naïve amnesiac in need of protecting. If she still had her magic he would not look on her that way.

"What little honor I have hath long been trumped by loyalty to my truest friends."

Terra faked a smile and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "So, why are you in Albrook?"

Cyan sighed like the heaving of an old volcano. He gestured, suggesting they walk, so they did. Then he began his story:

"After Kefka, I returned to the town of Miranda to start life anew with Lola, the soldier's widow with whom I had corresponded after the cataclysm. Alas, thou slaughtered the demon Wrexsoul that sought sustenance from the guilt and anguish in my soul, but my memories remained. Lola wished to marry, but I felt this would dishonor the memory of my deceased wife. She did not understand my objection. Our brief happiness disintegrated."

Terra nodded and furrowed her brow all while thinking how much a fool Cyan was, how much a fool he had always been. His pain was nothing compared to hers and worse, it was self inflicted. Wrexsoul had been an idiot to choose him as a host when she was equally available.

"Other events motivated me to leave the Eastern Continent. Now I travel with a band of mercenaries bound for the Magic Isle. We seek to rescue the inhabitants of Thamasa."

An electric tingle bounced from one end of Terra to the other and back again. _What threatened Thamasa? Monsters? Monsters in Mobliz _and_ the Magic Isle? Had she been wasting her time in the ruins while every where else magic flowed back into the world?_

Cyan paused. Terra's face betrayed her thoughts. "Thou pine for what hast gone."

She glared at him, angry for having been seen through, eager to drop her subterfuge. "They say that monsters have returned to the Magic Isle, don't they?" she asked accusatorily as if Cyan had tried to mislead her.

He answered evenly. "Thamasa's survivors have holed up in the caves at the center of the island. They dispatched a plea by carrier pigeon. They claim that olde horrors stalk the land once more."

Terra's sight drifted into the distance as if she stared through the fabric of reality and saw the monsters immediately before her. "These creatures should have died when magic left the world. The _Magic_ Isle should be an ironic name, but it isn't anymore, is it?"

Cyan sighed. "I am a simple man. I know not of these things, but I do know of loss. Canst thou not let go?"

"Never."

"Hmm. Neither can I." Cyan looked up, his face crumpled with inner conflict.

Terra followed his gaze up to the sword and shield emblem on the brick building in front of which they stood. Terra hadn't noticed that they had walked in front of the guard house, but she noted now how Cyan's hand rested on the hilt of his sword. He spoke slowly and carefully. "Memories of my failure to protect my loved ones harm me alone, but what thou seekest is better left un-sought."

Both of Terra's palms itched for weapons, but she knew with certainty that any youthful advantage in speed she had over Cyan was more than matched by his experience with a blade.

"You're going to turn me in? What happened to loyalty to your friends?" she hissed, fearful that an eavesdropper would overhear.

"I have considered resting this fine blade in my heart." Cyan patted the blue steel of his hilt. "I am deeply ashamed even of the thought, and though I have no love in this world, I cannot sustain another failure to protect those who remain. Swear to me, Terra, that this path thou take leads not to death."

Without thinking, without hesitation, Terra looked into Cyan's eyes and lied, "I swear it."


	7. Imperial Entanglement

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 6: Imperial Entanglement

A wave slapped Sabin's face. Briny water swam down his throat. The lights of the Albrook sea front flashed and vanished in the distance as he bobbed in the icy water.

The Lete River had been worse, he told himself. Though he had not been trying to resist the Lete's current, and he hadn't had a sword strapped to his back or muscles fatigued by illness.

He pulled air into his lungs and plunged once more under the water. It was easier to swim under the surface without the waves to disrupt his stroke, but the current disoriented him. He surfaced again to reconnoiter, knowing that he would have to move again quickly lest the chill penetrate him. The dock lights seemed no closer.

This is nothing, he told himself, but he doubted. The current was remorseless. It did not respect the name Sabin Figaro. It did not care about heroic deeds. It moved inexorably.

Words came to Sabin's lips spontaneously, words that he had uttered before: "You think a minor thing like the end of the world was gonna do me in?" He smiled. "Huh!" he shouted. "Is that what you think?"

He began to kick and paddle, repeating his rebuke to the world as a mantra though he merely murmured it in order to save his breath. The harbor grew nearer, but the current and the waves showed no sign of weakening. A black silhouette obscured some of the sea front, a ship anchored further out from the dock. This became his objective. If only he could reach the ship he might be able to cling to the anchor and rest for a spell.

Sabin mustered all his strength, forgetting his mantra, and swam for the ship. It heaved dangerously in the water. He swam wide around it. Finally he saw the anchor line holding firm as the current tried to pull the ship out to sea. On the landward side of the ship Sabin let the current sweep him towards the anchor line. His hand snagged it, wrenching his shoulder. He let out a moan of pain, but held fast and put his other hand on the line.

He hung on, his legs now wrapped around the chain too, but still submerged in the water. His body grew numb. The dock was closer than ever, but it was too far. Sleep, he desired sleep. He pressed his cheek to the cold chain of the anchor line and closed his eyes, unable to go on.

Then he noticed the music. It seemed to come to him as if from a dream. Someone played a flute on the deck of the ship. Sabin knew the lyrics to the tune:

_Oh my hero, so far away now._

_Will I ever see your smile?_

_Love goes away, like night into day._

_It's just a fading dream..._

"Help! Help!" Sabin tried to call out, but the words chattered unintelligibly out of his mouth. The flutist kept playing.

Sabin reached up with great effort. Hand over hand he pulled his body out of the water. His legs remained stiffly wrapped around the chain. Spray from the water slapping against the hull chilled him.

He began to sing. At first his teeth chattered so much that the words came out only as broken sounds, but eventually his voice warmed.

_We must part now. My life goes on._

_But my heart won't give you up._

_Ere I walk away, let me hear you say._

_I meant as much to you..._

He continued to sing the lyrics, using them for support the same way he used the chain. He did not notice that the flute playing had stopped. He could not see the dark silhouette lean out over the bow. When the rope hit him, his skin was too numb to feel it.

"Sabin! Sabin, the rope."

He came to his senses then and felt the rope flopping against his side. His fingers were so stiff. They reluctantly released their grip on the chain and were equally stubborn wrapping themselves around the rope. His legs fell away from the chain. He hung from the rope by his arms, begging his saviors to pull him up. Did they know he could not climb?

Slowly the rope rose. It seemed an eternity before Sabin reached the deck and was pulled over the gun rail.

"Fetch blankets," said a familiar voice that Sabin could not quite place. Where was Terra, he wondered.

"Damn, you are heavy." Ah, there she was, Sabin thought, recognizing Terra's voice.

"Isserserd," he mumbled.

"What's that?" Terra leaned closer.

"Is your sword." Sabin huffed.

"Typical, he jests already. He shall be fine," said the familiar voice that was not Terra's.

Sabin pried his eyes open and looked upon the retainer of Doma. Cyan's stern face broke into a wide grin.

"Sir Sabin! We hath caught a rather large lobster. Wouldst thou not agree?"

Sabin smiled.

Boots thumped across the deck. Someone threw a pile of blankets onto him.

"Those will only do so much," said Cyan. "Let us get thou to a hearth."

_The rain hath finally fallen. It drums upon the deck and the air itself feels relief._

_Sir Sabin hath flopped on to our ship. He is a welcome addition to the crew, though I lament that he is now bound to our doomed destination. I should be more optimistic. We art less than one day gone from Albrook. We shall rendezvous with the fleet later today. We make for the Magic Isle. By all rights, we shall find no monsters there, just villagers spooked by desperate wolves, or blood-thirsty bears, should we find anything at all._

_After all these years my soul is yet capable of worry. Terra is the object of my concern. I know not how to help her. Perhaps if I knew, then I might know how to help myself as well._

Cyan replaced the quill in its holder and placed his journal in the corner of his cabin, leaving the pages open to let the ink dry.

Cyan had a small cabin to himself, just enough space to stretch his hammock, or, with hammock stowed, eat alone at a bench. A peg protruded from the wall where he hung his sword. A wooden cubby accepted his armor. The space was private and functional. It remained as Cyan had found it, completely unadorned. His sword and armor bore the blazon of Doma, a kingdom wiped from the face of the earth. He kept these items because they remained functional. Cyan kept no physical mementos to remember his family by. He needed nothing to remind himself of who he was.

He wrote regularly, dutifully, in the journal, but he never turned back the pages to read what he had written. Once the last page had been filled, he would discard the book without a second thought.

Cyan took out a hooded cloak and threw it over himself. He blew out the candle, opened the door, and went out.

Rain fell heavily and the wind gusted in melancholy puffs. Lightning flashed far away so that the thunder rumbled like snoring.

Sabin stood on the poop deck, behind the helmsman, with arms locked against the railing. He stared out over the ship's wake to where the dark water reclaimed its relative calm. Sabin too wore a cloak, but the hood had been thrown back. He looked soaked. Cyan joined him at the rail.

"Here we are again," said Sabin, "borne on a ship with one destination as surely as the river, train, and paths on land have guided us in the past."

"Thou hast neglected thine meditation," Cyan observed, deflecting Sabin's philosophical musings.

"What does it matter? I have no pupils. There are none in the world for me to train. When I close my eyes to meditate, I see Duncan… and Vargas."

"Guilt. I know it well. Less familiar am I with the tenets of thine martial arts, but as I recall, they possess inherent value, pupils or no. Thou ought to resume thine practice."

"For what?" Sabin asked. "I'm no good in a fight anymore. I'm not even sure how I got here. Thinking back I see decisions that lead me here, but were they really mine to make? It seems now that there has only ever been one path and I did not choose it. The trouble is I think whoever did choose it is making it up as they go along."

"I have thought similarly," Cyan replied not unpleasantly. "But such ruminations lead to no salvation, nor even any impact upon our decisions. Symptoms. That's what thou have, symptoms of other concerns."

He sensed Sabin's surprise and the subsequent sound of intense thought: silence. Cyan stared out to sea, enjoying the water dripping off his nose and a lightness of being that came to him rarely, but less rarely after having written in his diary.

Sabin spoke: "I don't know where I would steer my path had I any control. I suppose that's my actual concern."

"That I doubt, Sir Sabin. Rather, thou know where thou must go, but thou art not comfortable with the destination."

"Don't propose to know me better than I…"

"Ship! Ship dead ahead!" The shout came down from the crow's nest.

"Ah," said Cyan, "We have reached the fleet sooner than I expected."

Then the watcher in the crow's nest called down. "She's flying the red and black."

Sabin smiled. "Nothing like fighting some pirates to take my mind off troublesome philosophical concerns, eh?"

But Cyan was not amused. "These are not pirates," he said. "That is the imperial flag."

Cyan turned and made for the prow. Sabin jogged after him.

"I'm sorry. I've got some rain in my ears. I could have sworn you said 'the imperial flag'."

"That is correct."

"How is that possible?"

But Cyan had begun shouting orders to his crew.

The ship with the red and black flag turned out to be a stout brig, slightly larger than Cyan's schooner and newly made, though Sabin was no ship expert. The two vessels traveled in the same direction, with the wind. The brig tacked so that the schooner would come up more quickly behind her. Sabin soon made out the flag clearly: the image of black magitek armor on a red background. He shook his head in amazement. Curiosity pushed out the worries that had roosted in his mind only moments before.

As the schooner pulled alongside the brig Sabin got a good look at their crew. Except for their uniforms they certainly looked like pirates. They greedily eyed Cyan's vessel, some of them with two eyes, many with only one. A full complement of fingers was also a rarity among them and though they carried identical sabers belted at the waist of their tan and gray uniforms, other implements including daggers, curved blades, even wrenches clung to belts or were strapped across ankles and forearms. These sundry weapons they stroked with their three, four, and five fingers, as if they preferred them over the sabers.

As the imperial crew made to throw grapples, the last of Cyan's men hurried on to the top deck. Cyan had ordered them to arm themselves and look busy. When the first imperial sailors hopped aboard they couldn't help but notice the fully armed crew distractedly repairing rope, polishing telescopes, and swabbing a deck already cleaned by the rain.

Cyan and Sabin stood side by side to greet the sailors. Terra sat on the poop deck with her legs hanging down, apparently pleased to have some entertainment. After a dozen imperial sailors had boarded, the captain of the brig emerged. He was a tall wiry fellow with a nasty scar running from his right ear to the corner of his mouth. His posture was hunched, ill fitting an officer, and a horror of tattoos reached up his neck behind the collar of his uniform as if malevolent shadows wished to drag his head down into his torso.

He made eye contact with neither Sabin nor Cyan and announced in a scratchy voice, "I hereby claim this vessel for the empress."

Sabin, having received no explanation from Cyan, leapt forward and shouted, "Pray tell! Who is this empress and where is her empire?"

The captain looked on Sabin, as if for the first time. He cringed and seemed on the verge of recognizing Sabin from somewhere. "I speak of Empress Celes Chere, of course, empress of the western continents and rightful ruler of the world."

Sabin gaped at the captain. Cyan murmured, "I shall explain later. Hold thine tongue. These thieves and liars would gladly cut it out." Then to the captain, "Good sir, we are on a humanitarian mission to the Magic Isle. Surely the good empress would not interrupt our noble mission."

The captain blinked, digesting Cyan's language slowly. "This is the empress's vessel," he repeated. "You will all swear loyalty to the empress and then change course to follow my ship. The empress will decide whether or not you shall resume your hoomanuhtrareean mission."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," said Cyan.

The captain scowled at Cyan. The sailors on the brig lined up along the railing, eager for a fight. Cyan's men began swabbing the deck closer to the grapples.

A small corner of the puzzle clicked together in Sabin's head. With a wry smile he acquired an eyepiece from one of Cyan's men. He peered through it, nodded, then broke the tense silence, "Captain, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. How was your day?"

The captain said nothing. All eyes were on Sabin.

"Terra, how was your day."

"Fine," she said slowly, confused as anyone.

"Fine," Sabin repeated, "not bad, you might say. Medium. So, so. So, so. Zo, zo?" Sabin raised his eyebrows at the Captain. "You see, I know you aren't really imperial troops, no matter what Celes has told you. I know where you are from."

"This is unwise!" Cyan protested.

"My friend here," Sabin indicated Cyan, "also knows where you are from and he is incapable of lying, imagine the opposite of yourselves."

On the deck of the brig, wrenches began smacking menacingly in open palms as even the least clever sailors realized they were being mocked.

"Cyan, tell us where these sailors are from."

Cyan's face reddened.

Sabin tried a new tack. "Time flies doesn't it? I'd say it must be two in the afternoon. What do you think Terra?"

Terra, an amused smile pulling her cheeks now, played along. "Eleven in the morning."

"No, no, closer to eleven at night," said Sabin. "Cyan, what time do you think it is?"

"Tis no time for games, Sir Sabin."

"What time is it?"

Cyan snapped, "Anyone can see by the sun that the time approaches six in the evening."

Sabin clapped Cyan's arm, "Very good! You all can observe that he is correct. Captain, I know you were shadowing the fleet that we seek to join, the fleet heading east. You probably didn't even know we were behind you." Sabin half-turned towards Cyan, "Now I know why you were anchored far out in the harbor when I found you. You were avoiding a run in with the imperials, but they had already dispatched a ship, this brig, after the rest of the mercenaries." Turning back to the captain, "Whatever else you may be, captain, you are no fool and wisely decided to draw away from the larger fleet and harass our small boat. However, if you take this telescope." Sabin tossed the eyepiece to the captain. "You will see a number of ships from that fleet doubling back to aid us. If you do us harm and attempt to flee, they will run you down. Isn't that right, Cyan?"

"Tis true," Cyan replied, his color returning to normal now that Sabin's scheme had fully revealed itself.

The captain peered through the telescope, lowered it, and then motioned for his men to get back on the brig.

"We will remember your refusal," the captain said, "The empress will hear of this."

Sabin shouted as the grapples were cut, "Tell her that Sabin, Cyan, and Terra send their regards."

With the threat vanishing into the west, the schooner raised full sail and quickly joined the rest of the fleet bound for the Magic Isle. Far from relieved, Sabin felt his temper rising. He took Cyan by the arm and wordlessly demanded an explanation. They went below deck. Terra followed.

"Tis nothing to be done at this late stage," said Cyan determinedly.

"Nothing to be done about what? What is Celes up to? What has happened in the west? Why are a bunch of Zozo thieves posing as sailors and calling her empress?"

"Tis nothing; famine and hoarding of food. Neighbor turns on neighbor. The tale tis the same the world over. Amidst all the trouble, however, _General_ Celes rediscovered her ambition."

"And promoted herself to empress," Terra pointed out.

Cyan shot her an irritated look.

Sabin ignored her. "But I thought Celes was in the north west, in Kohlingen, settling down with Locke."

"Locke hath become a shadow that trudges in Celes's footsteps. He wrongly believes that she is the answer to the hole in his heart, but Celes is not his Rachel, never was, and never shall be. Locke was deluded to think that Celes would ever settle down."

"So what? She's organizing the thieves?"

"She has progressed well beyond that. In Zozo there was unrest aplenty. She used it to gather an army. She stoked the flames and bent the people to her will. Her army hath already sacked Jidoor. Our fleet departed Maranda as her army approached, leaving behind only this vessel to retrieve thou."

Sabin looked to the floor. "How could this happen without my knowing it? With Jidoor's wealth…"

Cyan nodded. "She will seize Maranda with ease. I'm sure she has done so already."

Terra spoke softly, so confident in her words that she did not need to give them volume, "Victory will make her greedy. She won't stop with the western continents. She will build a fleet."

Sabin's eyes darted back and forth across the floor as if the contents of his mind were laid out across it to be searched. "That's why the shipbuilders in Nikeah were so busy … Why didn't I see this? I was so focused on my own troubles, I missed it completely."

"My thoughts exactly," Terra said, "I've been tearing the ruins apart in search of magic while all I hear about are magic monsters terrorizing practically the whole rest of the world!"

Sabin, lost in thought, ignored this. Then his mind reached its conclusion and he burst out, "Figaro! She will sail to Figaro next. We have to send warning to my brother."

Cyan spread his hands, helpless. "We are halfway to the Magic Isle and we have no carrier pigeons."

"We have to turn around! We will take your men, reinforce Figaro, and defend against Celes's invasion! Cyan, you said I knew where I must go, but I was uncomfortable with the destination. I must go to Figaro. I accept that now." Sabin looked at his companions for support. Lanterns in the hold threw a meager light on their passive faces.

Cyan lowered himself onto a barrel strapped to the bulkhead. "I was referring to a spiritual destination. What good will it do to return to Figaro?"

Sabin punched the ceiling. "What is wrong with you? Both of you. There used to be a light in your eyes. We used to fight tyranny!"

"Please!" Terra groaned. "Has your memory gone? Do you remember Banon? Do you know what he told me before I joined the Returners? He said, 'Terra, you are our only hope.' He went on and on about how it was my choice and no one could make it for me, but he also made it clear; if I didn't help, the rebellion would fail and you all would be killed. I was a confused little girl. What choice did I have? I never _chose_ to fight anything."

Sabin turned to Cyan, but Cyan remained unmoved, his face emotionless. "Thou know my story. I fought to avenge my family. Their murderer is dead, but I have no peace, so peace is what I seek."

"So you're just going to go and die now, is that it?" Sabin directed his accusation at Cyan.

"I shall do what I can until an honorable death finds me. Though I do not trust Celes, she may bring much needed unity to the world. I do not wish to slay her innocent conscripts; much better to kill monsters in a far corner of the world."

Sabin clenched his jaw. There it was. Celes would bring order, an iron fist perhaps, but maybe that's what this world needed. She just might be the ruler that Edgar could never be. Yet the thought of Figaro as her puppet state… It was repulsive to consider.

Celes's army would certainly conquer Edgar's weakened kingdom with ease unless an external force intervened. For a moment all of Sabin's anger focused on his brother. If only he was a proper king! If only Sabin had not abandoned him.

"Cowards!" Sabin shouted. He stomped away towards the ladder and ascended the top deck, his fists flexing. Night fell over him as he faced out to sea, facing the realization that the world he and his friends had saved from Kefka was not the World of Balance they had lost. That place could never be recovered.


	8. Defense of Art

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 7: In Defense of Art

The mercenary fleet laid anchor off the north coast of the Magic Isle. The warriors donned their weapons and armor, and lowered rowboats into the water. In the early morning, beneath an endlessly gray sky, the boats eased towards the shore. Green palms leaned out over the beach and a lush, jungle-covered mountain rose up in the distance. The Magic Isle appeared the same as it had for centuries, untouched by Kefka's cataclysm. How fortunate for it, Sabin thought jealously as he was rowed ashore.

The first boats lurched against the sand. Archers nocked their arrows while other soldiers drew machetes. Scouts rushed up the beach and into the shadows of trees as sailors pulled the boats out of the surf.

Cyan, Terra, and Sabin hopped into the water and waded onto the beach. A fresh-faced archer approached and spoke to Cyan: "Sir, we've begun to scout inland. So far no sign of monsters."

"Very good. Conceal thine men and set up patrols."

"Yes, sir."

Cyan turned to a dangerous-looking pair of men. These two had raptor eyes and hands that constantly drifted like divining rods over the gruesome array of throwing knives and short swords strapped about their persons.

He addressed them. "Contact the survivors. Instruct them to prepare to depart."

"Aye, sir," they replied before disappearing into the trees.

"Last we heard, the survivors of Thamasa had taken to hiding in the caves. With luck, they will still be there," Cyan explained.

Terra nodded absently, her eyes raking the landscape as if a sign of magic might appear at any moment.

Sabin said nothing, his thoughts with Figaro. The impending invasion of his homeland felt far more real than monster stories, the possibility of magic, or even the sand beneath his feet.

The day passed uneventfully. Cyan's men busily unloaded supplies and set up tents. Terra paced and badgered Cyan urging him to let her take troops and explore. Sabin sat apart from them, drawing aimlessly in the sand and considering how unlike the sand of Figaro desert this sand was.

The sun swam lazily across the sky, breaking the cloud cover and bathing the land in heat. The men with the raptor eyes should have returned by noon. As the shadows lengthened Cyan organized his men to set out for the mountain caves where the survivors hopefully waited. Cyan left behind a skeleton crew for the ships and a small force to protect the beachhead. The main force of forty swordsmen, with sixteen scouts forming a perimeter around them, plunged into the jungle. The air was dark and steamy. The troop walked to the rhythmic sound of machetes chopping vegetation.

Sabin walked along with disinterest, his thoughts and concerns far away. Terra practically hovered with eagerness. She cared not for mercenaries or terrified villagers. This was the Magic Isle and it held the last hope that she would find the mystical force again in this world. Sabin foresaw disappointment for her, the alternative was inconceivable. She placed all her hope in the renewal of magic. What would become of her when that hope was crushed?

Cyan came up beside Sabin. "This wood… 'tis too quiet, Sir Sabin. Eyes of creatures most foul observe us."

"Hmm. When do you think the trap will be sprung?"

"Nearer to the mountain, when there is high ground to be had. Or, mayhaps the attackers will postpone the ambush until the villagers emerge into the open."

"You grant these monsters a great deal of strategic thought. Why should they be anything but ancient beings angry at a world in which they no longer belong?" Sabin asked.

"Terra informs me that they possess a magical essence. We have no concept of that which stalks us. Best to prepare for the worst."

"Terra wants to believe… Look out!"

A projectile thicker than Sabin's arm flew through the space Cyan had only just occupied. It struck another warrior in the face garbling his cry of surprise with tooth-breaking punctuation. Then, much to Sabin's amazement, the bolt drew back to seek another target. The implement was no mere ammunition, but the arm of some kind of tree beast.

The monstrosity was covered in bark and topped with branches and leaves. Its roots writhed and probed like a colony of snakes. Its trunk had a face; a furrowed brow of bark, wrinkled sockets for eyes, a slight protuberance of a nose, and a mouth like the nook of a woodpecker. On either side of the face swung branches terminating in clusters of finger-length thorns. The tree beast was not alone.

Shouts rose up from all around, along with the searing cry of swords scraping scabbards. The copse and the ambush they had walked into were one and the same.

Sabin's troubles fled his mind. With anticipatory glee for the fight ahead he dodged a swing from the tree beast's branches and leapt up into it. He clambered up the trunk snapping branches as he went. The tree wavered beneath him and groaned as if in a strong wind. Sabin hoped it was expressing pain.

Having penetrated the ring of scouts, the trees thrashed the surprised swordsmen who were vulnerable in their light armor. Sabin spied Six-limbed, double-headed lizards driving the outer ring of scouts inward towards the melee and the gravity of the situation struck him. If anything, Cyan had underestimated the strategic capabilities of these fiends.

Terra, at least, held her own. She wielded Ragnarok two-handed and struck a tree limb with all her strength. A shower of splinters flew up. The limb broke and bent, sinewy wood barely holding the remains in place.

Cyan rallied some mercenaries and stood at the edge of their circle, winning a duel with the grasping roots of another tree. Fleshy, tubular wood-tentacles spun wildly in the air as his sword sang.

Sabin crouched against a thick branch and aimed his body like an arrow at another tree beast, intending to raze it with his Fire Dance blitz technique. Before he could begin, the snapping of branches alerted him to a projectile closing fast on his backside. Instinctively he flung himself sideways. A bird with a long sharp beak flew past.

Sabin scrambled for purchase, filling his hands with useless bark and twigs. He rolled as he hit the ground and was about to leap up and rejoin battle, but his legs stuck firmly. He had but a moment to glance down before the root tentacles snaked around his neck, arms, and torso, completely ensnaring him.

A tentacle swam around his forehead like a bandana. It torqued his neck so that the face of the tree could inspect him. The bark furrowed in a frown. The world was suddenly muffled as root tentacles probed into Sabin's ears. He clamped his teeth shut lest the tentacles slithering along his cheeks try to probe his mouth too. He heard a muted scream that was surely Terra.

The tentacles turned him to face her. Another tree had encircled her waist with its roots and wrenched Ragnarok from her grasp. She squirmed and grasped for the sword, but the tentacles quickly passed it out of reach. Tentacles slithered around her wrists, but before they could take hold she made magical gestures. Her lips formed magic words. She began to glow like an ember.

Sabin prayed that his eyes deceived him. He forgot his predicament. After all that he had endured he did not truly believe that any mere monster would be the end of him, but if magic had returned to the world then all his friends' sacrifices had been undone. After the War of the Magi, magic had vanished for a thousand years. Sabin and his friends had risked their lives and banished the dreaded force for barely two.

Terra glowed brighter. The tree quivered with fear. It tried to hold her away from its trunk. Terra's hair grew long and white. Her eyes elongated. She glanced at Sabin, manic excitement in her transforming face, then the tree holding her burst into flames with a flash of light.

Sabin blinked against the glare. Terra was gone. The tree beast fled, its bark blackened, its leaves and roots shriveled in upon themselves and flickering with rose-colored flames. Its brother held tight to Sabin. It hardly mattered. With magic revived, everything had changed

Sabin was lifted by his captor. He did not resist. The tree turned him around to face Cyan. The reptiles had surrounded Cyan's ring of survivors who held them off with swords and spears. Then the root around Sabin's neck squeezed, choking him. Sabin's eyes bulged and his skin quivered.

_Terra! Help me_, he thought. But she did not come.

Cyan understood the threat well enough.

"Stop!" He yelled, dropping his sword to the ground.

The grip around Sabin's neck did not loosen. Colorful spots appeared before his eyes.

"Drop thine weapons," Cyan ordered his men.

His men, being mercenaries, not loyal knights or soldiers trained to serve a commander, kept their guard up.

Sabin remained preternaturally calm in light of recent events. He relaxed in an attempt to open his throat, but the roots took up the slack. He focused inward, trying to slow his heart beat, preserve the remaining oxygen.

Cyan strode out of his protective ring of men. He walked around them, addressing each man. "I beg thou, surrender! We cannot win this fight."

A tree shot forward with surprising speed and bound Cyan in its grasp, pulling him back away from the mercenaries. With that, Sabin's tree relaxed. He gasped, his sight returning in time to see the last remaining mercenaries fallen upon, quite literally, by a tree, and the rest skewered and ripped apart by the lizards.

A desperate longing for home came over Sabin. Surely in Figaro's libraries he could find an explanation for the return of magic, and if he could not, then he would search the ancient vault between Kohlingen and Figaro desert for some ancient talisman to bind what once more was unfettered. If all else failed, he would fight side by side with his brother to protect their kingdom. _Protect it against what,_ he wondered? _Against Terra?_

The tree held Sabin firmly, keeping a root over his mouth to keep him from speaking. It carried him smoothly over the forest floor easily snapping vines and shrubs that cluttered its path. Based on the shadows, Sabin discerned that they were being taken south. He was unsurprised when the tree changed course to head east and then north. They were going to Thamasa, and, he hoped, to an explanation.

A four-winged bird, brightly colored and reminiscent of a butterfly, leaned out from one of the branches of Sabin's captor in order to inspect him. The bird found its balance and tucked its wings fan-like. It had a long sharp beak, like a spear. He noted vaguely that this beast, or another like it, had been the thing that had driven him from his perch during the battle.

The pair of tree beasts emerged into a clearing at the edge of Thamasa. The town sported no outer wall and the buildings were as quaint as ever, but their pastel colors had dulled and vines crisscrossed their sides. The tree beasts proceeded into town. They approached a gathering of creatures in the village square. Sabin's mind struggled to take in the myriad oddities.

One creature, consisting primarily of a man-length tube, snuffled in the dirt with its trunk while its two large, clawed limbs tucked in at its side and its tail twitched lazily. An eight legged creature with muscular, bluish-purple legs terminating in wheels rather than feet, looked up at Sabin with a tilt of its wide flat head, on each side of which perched a short tube and wet black eye. Other monsters small and large littered the tan dirt and scattered grass that covered the village square. Tall birds with translucent feathers, and asymmetric furred critters stood, perched, and reclined amidst hovering balloon monsters and lean, jet-black predators.

In the middle of the lounging monsters stood an easel with canvas. Behind the easel Sabin saw the legs of a girl, her arm clutching a palette splattered with paint. Relm poked her head out from behind the easel. She wore a new beret filled to bursting with red-blonde curls, a strand of which had sneaked loose and twirled down her forehead.

She smiled and Sabin immediately perceived the stubborn girl, overly pleased with herself, who he had known. Her face had lost the baby fat of just a few years before. Her brown eyes remained childishly large.

Relm set down her palette on the slightly concave head of one of her creatures. It took her brush in its pincers. One of the semi-translucent birds bent down to pluck off her paint-spattered apron with its beak. Underneath, she wore a green tunic woven with ribbons of ocean blue. It was tight and low cut to show off what puberty had recently given her.

Without a word, the beast with eight wheeled feet lifted up and undulated towards her. She slid onto its back, which curved to form a reclining chair. She closed her eyes and took an exaggerated yawn before making a shushing noise like wind across leaves. This signaled the tree beasts to release the prisoners. Sabin flopped to the ground on all fours. Cyan was similarly deposited.

Relm finally deigned to acknowledge their presence. "How do you like my menagerie?"

"How is this possible?" Sabin breathed.

"Magic!" Relm replied with a delighted grin.

Cyan spoke as if to a lost child who had anchored itself to his leg, "Where is thine guardian?"

Relm sat up sharply, scowling. Her recliner monster adjusted into an upright position. "Gramps is dead. I assume he's the one you meant. The answer is the same if you meant Interceptor. Shadow's dead too for all I care, but I didn't kill any of them if that's what you're suggesting."

"I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I'm sorry," Cyan repeated.

"Don't be. I've got my art." Relm stated with a practiced air that made the words all the less convincing.

In a flash of insight Sabin understood what had been familiar about the monster in Mobliz. It was Relm's creation and she had given it elements of all her 'guardians'. Its horns resembled Strago's wild hair. Its bandana resembled Shadow's mask. All of these things had been twisted into grotesqueries, but she had portrayed Interceptor's loyalty purely. The dog had never failed her.

Sabin stood slowly. The tree beast tensed. Its roots drew closer lest Sabin make a sudden move. "Your art travels far and wide," he said cautiously, realizing that Relm might not yet know that Terra had traveled with them.

Relm smiled.

"Ah! You've been to Mobliz. Isn't my creation amazing! The children there love him so." Relm sat up, suddenly filled with energy. She slid forward over the flat head of the recliner monster, onto the ground. "Mobliz is just the beginning, a model for all the towns of the world. Soon children will rule everywhere. We will have no adults to steal our future and fill us with stodgy old ideas, just children, pure and innocent, protected by my art."

"When the children grow into adults, like thou, what then?" Cyan asked.

"I'm no a-_dult_," Relm insisted with a fluttering laugh.

"Oh no," Sabin muttered sarcastically, "you're as pure and innocent as the day you snuck off against your grandfather's wishes to join our war."

Cyan, in a much more sympathetic tone, entreated Relm, "Child, thou art wiser than most, but with no memory of the past, other children will be naught but orphans doomed to duplicate the failures of their parents."

Relm cocked her head condescendingly at the knight. "Just what an old person would say. We will not repeat the failures of our parents. That's just the point. We are starting fresh. The adult world has brought us only pain. We did not deserve to be born into a ruined world. You adults are the immature ones, taking our future from us and leaving nothing behind. I tire of this argument. My art beckons." She scooped up her palette, nipped her brush from the up raised head of her obeisant monster. She began to attack her canvas with vigor. In moments she chimed, "finished" and an iron cage filigreed with grasping, clawed hands materialized around Sabin and Cyan.

Relm ordered her easel monster to turn around. It waddled into a new position on its three legs, revealing a still life of an iron cage with two occupants. Relm set down her implements and approached the cage.

"I'll tell you how this is possible," she said softly. "I kept a piece of the statues. Did you think I would follow orders blindly while we stripped magic from the world? Did you honestly think I would allow you adults to steal my gift forever?" She shook her head and Sabin found himself unconsciously aping the motion, trying to deny her words.

"No," he said. "That's impossible. We destroyed them all: Doom, Poltergeist, and Goddess."

Relm smiled a proud, awful smile. "Think back to the battle with Goddess."

The scene came readily to mind. Sabin's nostrils had burned with the noxious ozone filling the air as spells discharged all around. Though Goddess had already been weakened by Kefka, she yet retained a vital magical essence, and defended herself with all her ability. Sabin had looked on the statue and seen as much menace in the stone image of the woman standing atop a horned beast, her modesty barely protected by a fluttering cloth, as he had seen in Doom's asymmetric eyes, limbs, and bony protrusions, or poltergeist's stacked heads and sets of arms clutching a war axe adorned with deformed wailing skulls. Now as Sabin thought back, he imagined how she had looked through Relm's eyes: beautiful, a work of art. Perhaps she had even seen a nurturing face, the image of a mother she had never known.

Sabin and his friends, Relm included, had battered the statue with magic and weathered its counterattacks until cracks crawled through the stone. Finally, the head upon which the stone woman stood had crumbled like so much stale bread. The statue had toppled to the floor and split apart. Taking no chances Sabin and the others had spread out to collect every remaining bit and reduce them all to dust. Relm had run off into a dark corner and returned with the bust in hand. She had flung it to the floor sending tiny pieces skittering off in every direction like cockroaches fleeing light.

"That wasn't the real head that you destroyed," Sabin said with a sudden realization.

Relm beamed. "No, it wasn't. It was a replica I painted and manifested after hiding the original. Not even Locke suspected my theft."

Cyan hadn't moved from where the tree beast had dumped him. He looked at Relm through the cage with sympathy in his eyes. He asked, "I do not understand. Why did our magic not continue to flourish?"

"Goddess is weak, obviously," Relm explained as if to a particularly thick child, "She can't sustain even the simplest spells, but my art is different. It serves as a physical anchor through which the magic can flow into existence, and my monsters, well… once manifested they take on a life of their own."

"And you let them prey on the innocent folk of Thamasa, your so-called friends and neighbors," Sabin accused.

Relm glared at him. "My monsters do not kill innocents. The people of Thamasa did not accept me when my magic alone flourished. They attacked my creatures and suffered the consequences. No more shall die so long as they stay cloistered in their hidey hole in the mountains. The violent soldiers that came with you were a different matter of course."

Cyan spoke, "Relm, we art friends. Thine cages and monsters change that not at all."

"Don't play me," Relm spat, "I'm not a child that can be bought with hugs and dandelions." She turned and stalked away.


	9. Hybrid's Other Half

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 8: Hybrid's Other Half

Night fell over the square, but brought no reprieve from the muggy air or biting insects. Relm's creatures slept. Some curled up into themselves like cats, others slept standing in the manner of birds. They surrounded the captives.

Sabin made signs with his hands and uttered the magic syllables of Break for the dozenth time. For the dozenth time, nothing happened. The iron bars of the cage held firm. He had long since given up trying to bend the bars with his muscles. It had been hard for him to believe that the cage, sprung from a painting, would remain solid enough to hold him, but its reality had gradually convinced him. Funny, he mused, that Relm's talent had never impressed him until he had found himself its target.

Something growled in the dark and clicked its teeth menacingly, disturbed by Sabin's motion. Sabin gave up and sunk to the ground.

"Even if we could escape this prison we would be defenseless against these beasts," Cyan pointed out.

Cyan sat cross legged, staring at the mansion Relm had disappeared into. The small two story house where she grew up sat dilapidated next door. No doubt she had resurrected the fire-ravaged mansion with a painting. "We have no choice but to turn Relm's heart," he continued.

Sabin nodded in the darkness. "No easy task. What do you think darkened her soul so much? The revelation that Shadow was her father, with all his attendant sins, or all the battles she fought? Strago was right to try to keep her away from the fighting. I hope, for his sake, that death is the true and final end so he can't know the consequences of his failure."

"Tis not the end. Thou know that as well as I. Furthremore, Strago did not fail. I prefer that thou not profane the dead with such accusations."

Sabin raised his voice. "Why? Are you afraid I will speak poorly of you; you who are so eager to die?"

"Says he who seeks to remove the iron that separates us from a hundred claws and teeth."

"At least I'm doing something! You're just sitting there. I've yet to hear any ideas from you," Sabin yelled angrily.

"I am thinking. Thou should try it. Thou might even find that thine actions thereby multiply in efficacy. All we can do is think about words to sway Relm. We may also hope that Terra is safe, that she will remember her true self and act accordingly."

Sabin snarled, "What makes you so sure that her true self is the one we want her to remember?"

"Sir Sabin, dost thou abandon faith in friends so easily?"

"Recently my friends have given me little cause for faith. Terra and I spent a few nights in the ruins. We had time to talk. How much did she tell _you_ about her time there?"

Sabin seemed to hear a smile in Cyan's voice when the old knight replied, "She told me enough. She told me of a dream she had. She dreamt that her father was leading her into the mines of Narshe, but it was not her father. It was Kefka. She told me that he was taking her home and that home was the Esper world, which was, in the manner of dreams, concealed within the mine."

"And that gives you hope?" Sabin asked incredulously.

"Yes."

A silence passed while Sabin mulled over the dream, which Terra had not confided in him. How could it be a hopeful thing? He finally gave up and muttered, "I still can't believe Relm kept the head of the Goddess. Wouldn't we have known?"

"I knew." Terra's voice emerged from the darkness loud and clear.

She dispelled the Invisibility she had wrapped about herself and materialized outside the cage. She was bruised and smudged with dirt. Nothing but green stubble covered her head, but she looked more alive than ever. She had recovered her swords which stuck out over each shoulder from the sheaths on her back. Pink flames licked at her skin, illuminating her.

Sabin and Cyan turned to her, paralyzed and speechless. Terra went on, "I had always suspected that we had been _incomplete_ in our obliteration of magic. Relm probably saved my life by keeping the head. I should have died."

Sabin peeled his eyes off Terra for a brief moment to survey Relm's monsters scattered around the cage. He realized that Terra had cast a Sleep spell over them. Relm had no idea the power that was about to be unleashed. If Relm's art formed an anchor for Goddess's weakened power then the Esper / human hybrid that was Terra must be an even greater anchor, and now, in proximity to the statue, Terra's full power manifested once more.

Terra closed her eyes. A satiated expression came over her face. "So close. I can feel Goddess's presence! It is hidden nearby."

"Terra," Cyan spoke hesitantly, "remember thine true self."

Her eyes flashed open. "My true self? You know nothing about my true self. You're still trying to manipulate me, all of you. I'm sick of being other people's weapon, other people's hope. I'll show you my true self."

The pink flames ensconcing her arms flared. Sabin and Cyan fell back towards the opposite end of the cage as a fierce heat emanated from Terra. The flames glowed white hot. Terra's clothes burned away instantly. The flames wrapped around her arms and legs, and grew out of her head into a bright mane. Her swords, suspended by magic, floated to her sides. Her face morphed: eyes enlarging and slanting, teeth lengthening into fangs. Then the heat vanished and only Terra the Esper remained.

Sabin cowered at the far end of the cage. Witnessing Terra's original transformation, he had been stunned by surprise and then pity. Terra had frightened even herself then, unable to understand the changes taking hold of her. There was no fear in her now. That was reserved for Cyan and Sabin.

Terra flew towards the house where Relm had grown up, her aura alight with the vital orange of Haste. The earth shook. A fountain of dirt and debris erupted from the center of the house, it's walls and roof flying away like playing cards. Terra flew to the top of the fountain and plucked from the detritus the head of Goddess.

Sabin and Cyan stepped from the hole that Terra's transformation had melted though the cage and looked up at Terra holding Goddess aloft above a churning spire of earth. She screeched victoriously and launched into the sky.

They lingered with mouths agape, staring at the comet-like streak in the sky even as Terra's Sleep spell broke. Relm's monsters groggily stirred. Still neither man moved until a screech from Relm's dwelling pierced the night, the cry opposing Terra's elation with its rage and desperation. Sabin grabbed Cyan's arm and they flung themselves madly into the dark jungle.

They sprinted with arms outstretched, slapping aside vines and leaves, and narrowly avoiding half-invisible trees. Cyan had shed his plate mail in the hot cage. Nonetheless, he could not match Sabin's pace and he lagged behind.

Sabin doubled back. "You must hurry."

"Leave me. I will delay them for thou."

Already the sounds of snapping vines and angry beasts reached out through the forest.

"I will not leave you and I'll have no more of this honorable death nonsense. Be a man! You are useless to me or anyone else if you die now." And then, without thinking, Sabin slapped him.

Cyan roared in rage and Sabin, sensing he had crossed a line, darted further into the forest. Cyan charged after him with shouts of, "Coward! Come back and fight me!"

The light of dawn was spreading out across the sand as Sabin and then Cyan stumbled out onto the beach. The fleet, blessed sight, anchored off shore, but the beach was strangely deserted except for the scattered rowboats on which they had arrived.

Sabin shoved a rowboat into the water then leapt in. Cyan came running, red-faced and breathless. He stomped out into the water as the boat began to pull away. Sabin ran to the shore-end of the vessel. Cyan took a fatigued swing at Sabin's face, but was thrown off balance as Sabin hefted him by the collar and dumped him aboard.

Sabin rowed with all his might. Monsters emerged from the trees and trumpeted at the sight of their quarry. The boat flew through the water with Sabin's powerful strokes. They headed straight for a steam ship, one of the few in the fleet, but certainly the ablest to make a quick escape regardless of the wind. "Cyan," Sabin breathed, "call out, _huff_, to weigh anchor!"

Cyan pushed himself upright and cupped a hand to his face. He took a deep breath then bellowed towards the steam ship, "Weeiiigghhh aaaannchhoooorrr."

Sabin continued rowing, seeing only the growing swarms of horrors testing the water's edge. Cyan's face creased with frustration, then anger, "They do not respond, lazy, good for nothing, scoundrels!" Then abruptly, Cyan exclaimed, "Sabin, slow down!"

The rowboat crashed against the larger ship's hull unseating Cyan and flinging him atop Sabin.

"Why didn't you warn me sooner!" Sabin yelled, throwing Cyan off.

"Be silent and climb, thou uncouth gorilla," Cyan shot back.

A thick-roped fish net had been draped down the side of the ship to allow soldiers to quickly disembark into the rowboats. Sabin grasped the netting and pulled himself up. Cyan followed slowly, every inch a colossal effort.

Sabin pulled himself over the gun rail and slipped in a puddle on the deck. He raised a bloody hand up to his face. The crew lay slaughtered around him, bodies littering the deck. Sabin growled with anger. How could Relm's creatures have considered this self-defense?

Sabin leaned over the rail. "Cyan, hurry!"

Breathlessly, "What for? Command the men to set sail."

Sabin did not respond but dashed to the windlass and began drawing the anchor up.

Sabin latched the anchor in place just as Cyan flopped over the gun rail.

"By Kefka! The crew."

"No time for a funeral or it will be our own. Look out!"

Cyan dropped to the deck and an angry spear-bird sliced through the air. Sabin peered up at an entire flock circling above the ship's smokestack.

"Follow me," said Sabin, "we must get below deck."

Sabin threw open a hatch and disappeared below deck. Cyan scrambled after him. Guided only by faint slanting light that slashed sidelong through portholes in the bulkhead they hurried through the ship's bowels. They came to a dark room with big metallic shadows.

This is it, Sabin thought.

He began probing around the edges of the room, ignoring the grime his hands collected. Behind him came the scraping sound of a match being struck. A flickering glow filled the space.

"Sir Sabin, for what dost thou search?" Cyan asked, holding the match above his head. Sabin turned and grabbed the matchbox.

"These." He extracted one, struck it. The faint light increased. The room was full of pipes, dials, and metal wheels. Cyan gasped.

"Look, I know you don't like machines, so I'll figure this out," Sabin said, "head up top and steer the ship. Head east into the sun and watch out for those birds."

"No, Sir Sabin. Thou mistake my emotion. This mechanism, I recognize it from my book, the Machinery Manual."

Sabin gave a skeptical frown, but Cyan missed it entirely. He had already begun to open some valves and close others. Innards of the furnace began to glow with heat.

"Alright," Sabin allowed, "I'll steer." Just as Sabin made to leave, the slanting sunlight vanished as if eclipsed by a large object. Something thudded against the hull causing the whole ship to lurch and tilt horribly.

"Get us moving. I'll deal with this," Sabin called over his shoulder. He retraced his steps, one foot on the floor and one foot on the wall as the ship was pulled starboard. He leapt the stairs three at a time to reclaim the top deck.

Overhead spear-birds circled, except that "overhead" was forty-five degrees off center. Sabin wedged himself in the hatch and looked across the slanting deck to where a profusion of purple tentacles was pulling up the massive slimy body attached to them. A round, purple head crested the side of the ship followed by a pair of rheumy yellow eyes and a comically-wide mouth braced with uncountable foot-long teeth.

Relm's rendition of Ultros had only just flopped onto the deck when Sabin launched himself from the hatch. Poor child, Sabin thought sympathetically as he Blitzed the octopus, she always did like that monster.

With clear mind and perfect focus Sabin's fist struck the creature between the eyes. It roared and flailed its tentacles but Sabin moved with blazing speed. Wavy heat shimmered in his wake. He wrapped his hands around a tentacle and twisted the squirmy limb. Then he bent the tentacle like a bow string and used it to launch himself for another strike, but Ultros batted him out of the air and he skidded across the deck.

Sabin picked himself up eager to fight this old nuisance. He began his fire dance Blitz, knowing how the octopus hated fire. Sabin dashed forward, avoiding the swinging tentacles, and moving with such speed that friction-tempted fire flickered in his wake. At the heart of the gathering fire Ultros writhed. Sea water sizzled on the skin of the monster and the blood on the deck boiled and popped angrily. Sabin was about to deliver the fatal blow when Ultros squealed and squirted ink in his eyes.

Sabin swung his fist blindly and stumbled as his hit struck only air. A wet tentacle slapped him upside the head and launched him against the ship's railing. Sabin staggered to his feet. He kept his eyes closed and took a defensive posture. Then he waited. He didn't have to wait long for the whistle of a large tentacle swinging through the air.

Using only the sound for guidance he adjusted his balance, caught the tentacle and snapped it like a whip.

"Seafood soup!" Ultros exclaimed when the shock hit him.

Sabin wiped the ink from his eyes just in time to see Ultros, filled with terror and perhaps some déjà vu, scramble away and pitch itself overboard into the sea.

Sabin allowed himself a brief smile. _I've still got it._ Then he went to the wheel and began turning it round to guide the ship's bow out to sea. A spear bird made an attempt at his flesh, but he slapped it aside. It struck the deck, dying instantly. The other birds kept their distance.

Sabin cast a glance back at the beach. Long lines of monsters ambled out into the water and began to swim. It was hard to tell at such a distance, but he thought he saw Relm seated atop one such creature. The beach and the monsters disturbing the sea faded into the distance as the steam ship picked up speed.

When the Magic Isle had almost vanished below the horizon, Cyan emerged from below.

"She will never stop so long as she believes Terra and the statue are with us," Cyan said.

"Relm is not the one we should be concerned about."

"Terra is sane," Cyan said confidently.

"And who's to say the world was not better off in the hands of a madman?"


	10. Thespians, Spies, and an Empress

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 9: Thespians, Spies, and an Empress

The sun beat down on Sabin's shoulders. He rested against the wheel, one hand lazily holding the ship on course. He tried to think and plan, but all the pieces on the board moved beyond his influence while heat and lack of sleep dulled his wits. He gave up strategizing for the moment and thought of Figaro; of home and life that was. He remembered playing together with Edgar in the castle when they were boys.

Edgar would spend hours meticulously constructing feats of engineering with wooden cogs, axles, and stacking blocks. Sabin delighted in knocking them down. Screams would echo through the castle. They would fight, but their anger never lasted. Once, Edgar had built a functional miniature clock tower. Sabin had stomped into the room, pretending he was a Hades Gigas, and crushed the tower walls between his hands. Edgar, his face pinched and red, had screamed and chased Sabin through the castle. What had started with anger ended in an exhilarating game of chase, after which the whole impetus for fighting had been forgotten.

Sabin felt ashamed for his indulgent daydreaming, but when he returned his thoughts to strategizing, he found his mind already made up: set course to Figaro. He longed to return home and, with luck, the Empress's invasion would just have begun. With a bit more luck, she might be used as a counter-weight to Terra's power.

The shortest route from the Magic Isle to Figaro is a north east diagonal that cuts straight across the Western Continent. The two oceanic routes around the Western Continent are nearly equidistant, but north followed by east passes near Mobliz, Relm's territory, and east followed by north passes near Maranda, Celes's territory.

If only they had an airship, Sabin thought.

Relm was certainly keeping a close eye on the steamship. Birdlike creatures ceaselessly circled over head and Sabin had spotted some rather unnatural-looking fish in the water. This made the decision easy; avoid Mobliz. The steamship traveled east.

Sabin and Cyan worked themselves ragged running the steamship. They manned the helm in shifts. Every other hour of waking they spent maintaining the boiler; keeping a healthy supply of coal in the fires and adjusting the pressure as needed. The two had hardly spoken since being caged in Thamasa, but as the ship neared Maranda, Cyan's heavy steps could be heard clomping up from below deck.

Cyan emerged with a mug of ale from the ship's larder in one hand and a telescope in the other. He handed the drink to Sabin.

Sabin had expected smoke in the sky, but as they rounded the eastern tip of the western continent the sky was a clear blue and Maranda looked peaceful with only the wisps of cooking fires drifting above the buildings.

Cyan peered through the telescope. "Maranda hath surrendered."

"Maybe not," Sabin insisted, "perhaps Celes has not even taken it yet."

"No." Cyan passed the telescope. "Look to the flag. Celes has been and gone again. We continue north?"

"Yes, north to Figaro."

"Our plan is to bring together our foes, Relm and Celes, so that they enter battle with each other?"

Sabin spat. "Relm is nothing. Terra is the world's only concern. World domination is Celes's concern."

"Ah, thus Celes is the immovable wall and Terra the irresistible force?"

Sabin nodded. "I only pray we are not too late to save Figaro. Bitch!" Emotion overtook him. "Why does she strike at Figaro!"

Cyan gave a measured response, "In Zozo she gathered men. In Jidoor she claimed gold. In Figaro she will seize machines and advanced weapons. From there perhaps she will head further north to Narshe, reopen the coal mines to power the machines. She will be unstoppable."

"Terra can stop her."

"Then why not seek Terra?" Cyan asked. "I have a notion of where her heart would take her."

Sabin turned away from Maranda and looked north once more. "Yes. Her heart would take her to Mobliz and if those orphans break her heart once more, it will be the end of the world all over again. _My_ heart wishes to be in Figaro when the world ends."

Cyan cocked an eyebrow, "Sir Sabin, I am confused. Who was it who had had enough of the other's talk of honorable death."

An old smile cracked Sabin's face. He clapped Cyan on the shoulder. "You think a minor thing like the end of the world was gonna do us in!"

Having rounded the continent at Maranda, the steam ship continued north. Sabin and Cyan grew ever more fatigued. With the coal running low, Sabin felt great relief when he spotted sails on the horizon. He called Cyan up on deck and they watched as two ships from what must have been Celes's rearguard intercepted them. One came alongside their port bow and threw grapples. The other circled warily.

Sabin and Cyan stood on deck, unarmed and filthy; no worse or better than when they had begun their journey.

The grapples scraped along the deck then clenched the gun rail. The ships thumped together. Wood protested but held firm.

Soldiers in tan uniforms leapt aboard brandishing swords. On the opposite deck a dozen short-statured bowmen nocked arrows. Sabin noted that wrenches hung from their belts.

Sabin and Cyan stood side by side, still and calm as the eye of a storm. The soldiers surrounded them, ordered them not to move, and pointed their swords. Others charged below deck to explore the ship. After a short time, the captain stepped aboard and was briefed on the status of the steamship. Finally, the captain addressed Sabin and Cyan.

"Ho there, sailors. What business have you in these waters?"

Sabin replied, "We flee the Magic Isle and head north for Figaro."

The captain tucked both arms in the small of his back and began an overly-formal, military pace; regular stride with a sharp turn at the end. He appeared to be delighting himself with the movement.

"Which of your lies shall I unravel first? I'm in the mood for a good yarn. Let's hear more of your fiction: Why did you not seek a nearer harbor for repairs, resupply, and a proper crew?"

Cyan took his turn responding, "We were eager to put as much distance between ourselves and the Isle as possible. Perhaps fear hath muddled our thinking."

"A likely response," muttered the captain, "and what, pray tell, is so fearful about the Magic Isle? When you answer, do try to come up with a more entertaining excuse than muddled minds."

"Magic has returned to the world. We are pursued, even now, by myriad magical beasts and horrors," said Sabin.

The captain interrupted his pacing, turned to the pair and began a very slow, exaggerated clap, "Bravo, bravo, the storyteller finds his stride."

Cyan and Sabin exchanged a glance. Cyan asked, "Didst thou formerly have employment at the opera house?"

The captain blushed furiously. "Of course not. I'm no opera floozy. I'm a ruthless cut-purse, cut-throat, from Zozo!"

Cyan and Sabin exchanged another glance. Sabin whispered under his breath, "follow my lead."

"In that case," Sabin said to the captain, "we are actually _little birds_ with a special message for _Maria's_ ears only."

The captain's eyes ballooned. He stepped closer to Cyan and Sabin and whispered excitedly, "you're spies for _Maria_?" He winked when he said Maria.

"That is correct," said Cyan. "We have an important message for Maria."

The captain stepped back, his spine becoming ramrod straight. "Soldiers," he commanded, "Escort these men to the brig."

The soldiers moved in. Sabin and Cyan did not resist. They were taken aboard, marched below deck, and ushered into the brig. It was a tiny room, little more than a closet that appeared to have been added as an afterthought to the ship. The door was closed and locked with a dramatic clunk of metal. Instantly it was unlocked and opened.

The theatrical captain stood before them with a lantern.

"Infinite apologies, but once I realized the situation, I did not wish to expose your identities. I had no idea you were trusted spies of Maria, I mean, the Empress. She's beautiful, don't you think? I remember seeing her throw her bouquet off the balcony at the end of Act two. You were there, right? Wasn't it a marvelous performance?"

"We don't like operas," muttered Sabin gruffly. "We're just following orders for the Empress. We were told to say those secret words to recognize her agents. We've got vital information for her, so you better take us to her quick."

Even in the guttering light from the sole lantern it was apparent that the captain had blanched.

"Uh, of course, I mean, tough spies such as yourselves don't like operas. Only sissies like operas. I was just… I was told to say those things, as part of the code. They must not have instructed you on that part."

"Just get us some food and take us to the Empress!"

"Aye, sir," the captain squealed before backing out of the brig and hustling away.

"Sir Sabin," stated Cyan, "that was horrible."

"Oh come on, I was just playing with him."

"Not thine cruelty, Sir Sabin, thine acting."

The ship made haste to shore. Sabin and Cyan had barely finished their meal when the captain personally came to retrieve them. He bound their hands in order to keep their identities as spies secret. He apologized throughout the process and when he was finished, the knots were so loose the Sabin had to take up the slack in his palm lest the rope fall off his wrists entirely.

They were rowed to shore and Sabin looked on his homeland, Figaro, for the first time in far too long. The beach to which they headed abutted the vast desert and was situated well west of South Figaro. Much of the shore consisted of rocky crags, but Celes's forces had landed where the rock broke and the beach flowed smoothly up to merge with desert sands.

The beach was a hive of activity as soldiers, engineers, and servants ferried supplies through the narrow breach in the rocks. Sabin wondered if his brother even knew Celes had landed. The ideal place to stop her would have been on the shore. Now that opportunity was lost. Sabin gritted his teeth. How could Edgar be such a mechanical genius and yet an imbecile when it came to protecting his people?

The boat landed. Sabin and Cyan were lead up the beach to the crest. At the top Sabin was assaulted by mixed emotions. The scent of salty ocean air mixing with dry desert dust conjured pleasant memories, but the sight of his homeland defiled by white tents flying the loathsome imperial standard brought bile to his throat.

They were led to an inconspicuous tent and the captain entered ahead of them. He emerged after a few moments beaming with pride. Sabin and Cyan were lead inside.

Celes was alone inside save for the two guards who had entered with the "prisoners". She smiled, moving only her mouth, showing just a hint of ice-white teeth. "So these are my _trusted_ spies."

Sabin returned her gaze, determined to show no weakness. Celes merely looked from him to Cyan and back.

"Guards, leave us." Though they were unarmed and her hand rested on the hilt of her sword, Celes did not remove their bonds.

Her tent was a simple affair. The wood desk at its center was spread with maps of Figaro and sketches of Edgar's castle. Celes wore pale yellow tights and no armor but a hardened leather jerkin.

"I neither expect good fortune, nor trust it when it appears," she began, "and yet two valuable captives have fallen into my hands from the clear blue ocean. Explain yourselves."

Sabin stepped forward, keeping his eyes fixed on Celes and his tone non-combative but serious. He spoke as he had spoken to Celes under different circumstances, in the Falcon's war room, discussing the assault on Kefka's Tower. "I have traveled half the world since leaving Figaro. There is no time to recount my whole tale. What you must know is that we have all been deceived. Magic remains in our world. The statue…"

Celes held up a hand. She relaxed into the chair behind her desk, opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, and waved at Sabin to continue.

"The statue, Goddess. Its head remains. Relm secreted it away so that she would not lose the ability to bring life to her art. This is the reason that Terra lived after we destroyed the other statues. Now Terra has stolen Goddess from Relm. She will use it and her purposes are dark."

Celes yawned, rolled her eyes. "What do you expect me to do about it?"

Sabin responded without hesitation, "You must ready your army for magical combat. Let us help you. It is the only way we can stand against Terra."

"That's what I thought you would say. Do you expect me to believe this ploy? Do you expect me to halt my campaign on the word of Sabin Figaro whose brother's kingdom I have invaded? I'm offended! What do you take me for? And you, taciturn knight, what's your role in all this?"

"General," Cyan began with her old title. Celes bristled, but resisted correcting him. "There is no love lost between us, but I call thou general without mockery. Neither thine skill nor thine cunning can be disputed, but every word Sir Sabin speaks is true. Let us speak to King Edgar. Rather than do battle, we will convince him to join thou." Cyan hesitated then, but Sabin looked over at him and nodded pleadingly knowing that the knight hated to betray his faith in Terra, but they had to assume the worst. "Terra is unwell. We fear she will try to outdo her _original master_."

Celes gave no clue that these words affected her in any way. She suddenly signed mystical runes with her hands and spoke the syllables of magic. Both Cyan and Sabin recognized the spell. It should have frozen the air in their lungs, killed them both painfully as they choked and froze from the inside out. Nothing happened.

"There you go," she said, "no magic. Now back to the business of Edgar. His chocobo riders have had ample time to survey my encampment, yet my spies in South Figaro report that there has been no call to arms, which means that either Edgar counts his palace guards as sufficient to repulse me or, and this is my bet, he will characteristically flee with his tunneling fortress and leave the people of South Figaro at my mercy. This outcome is no good to me. I'm here for his machines. If the threat of slaughtering the people of South Figaro is not enough to make Edgar surrender, and don't think I wouldn't do it, perhaps the threat of killing his brother will be. What have you to say to my plan?"

"The statue is weak. Its power requires proximity and even when it was near we could not use magic, only Terra," Sabin explained with fragilely intact patience. "There are forces that move beyond your sight. Even Edgar cannot flee forever. Distrust me if you must. I will do whatever is necessary to convince my brother to surrender, but you ignore our warning at your own peril."

"Thank you. I'll keep that in mind, but don't think it will disturb my sleep."


	11. Mama's Orphans

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 10: Mama's Orphans

The sky parted before Terra. She shot upward, her wispy tendrils, at once like both hair and flame, snapping in the wind. She burst into the clouds and emerged on the other side to hold the head of Goddess aloft to the stars. They shone brightly, serene and permanent.

_Has it only been two years since I last flew as an Esper,_ she asked?

Two years ago Terra had used the last of her fading powers to guide her friends safely from Kefka's collapsing tower. Unbound as magic vanished, the tower had crumbled as if all its mortar had turned to water.

_All the mortar except that directly beneath our feet_, Terra realized, thinking back. She ran her thumb over Goddess's cheek, now rough and pocked from weather, then corrected herself, _all the mortar except that beneath Relm's feet._

_How stupid of me not to realize she had stolen a fragment of magic._

Terra herself had fallen from the sky, descending gradually over Mobliz, though she fought with every ounce of will to remain aloft. The pink fire had faded from her skin, and her claws and fangs had retracted. On her hands and knees in Mobliz's mud, the last of her power left her. Magic had gone with the deep aching pain of a fresh bruise, but all throughout her body, penetrating deep into her heart, stomach, loins. The ache had battered her skull and throbbed inside her teeth, her eyes, her tongue.

Then it evaporated.

The pain had left her with an emptiness penetrating deeper than hunger, fatigue, or the most hopeless isolation.

_And to think, if I'd only stayed closer to the airship, closer to Relm, my powers would've remained._

Her lips curled back from her fangs and she let out a cat-like growl of anger.

_Revenge!_ Screamed a voice that was not her own. _You can kill her. Nothing can stop you now! Kill, kill, kill…_ The madman cackled.

Terra thrashed in the cold thin air, but the nihilistic voice in her head only laughed harder.

_Without Relm and her preservation of the statue, I'd have died as surely as any warrior cut in two on the battlefield,_ Terra told herself,_ and the others would have died in the collapsing tower. She saved our lives._

The words did nothing to diminish her anger or shut out Kefka's voice. She snarled at herself, _Better that we'd all died!_

She tucked Goddess under her arm, ashamed of even the stone's gaze. Above the clouds the stars looked more permanent than stone. They remembered a time long past when Espers and humans lived side by side in peace, but the humans had been envious of the Espers' powers. Now there was just one Esper in all the world.

_Not even one. A half,_ Terra thought bitterly. Two years was a long time to live as a half, but her two halves were finally whole.

_More than whole, really. Don't forget to count me,_ Kefka teased.

Terra screamed, then dashed across the cloud tops, attempting to leave her past behind.

She flew for days, chasing the sun to the horizon and back again. The Goddess sustained her. She imagined the wind scattering before her out of fear, but it was only her imagination, for the Zephyrs had dissolved years ago. The air was empty of magic.

A profound loneliness crept up on her, a loneliness made worse by Kefka's niggling laughter always at the edge of her senses. She had a vision of herself as a diver in the ocean's depths, alive only by the integrity of a bubble of air, but her bubble was made of magic. She pushed the vision of loneliness away. It was only a lingering human frailty. She rejected the confused little girl she had once been, a girl who had feared herself incapable of human emotion. That girl had been naïve and lacking self confidence. She had confused the attention of men like Locke and Edgar with love, but it had only been infatuation, or less, mere curiosity.

Now she knew better. She was above transient human emotions, even real love. _Especially_ love. She had loved the orphans of Mobliz and they had loved her in return, until they stopped, a sudden change easy as changing clothes.

Terra was master of her own destiny now, master of all destinies.

And yet her flight took her to the one place where she might be accepted: Mobliz. Hope, for such a flimsy thing, moved her with uncanny strength. A cackling voice in her head told her that when she departed Mobliz, the town would be a graveyard and she would finally see clearly, perfectly dis-illusioned.

The last Esper on Earth ignored the voice and flew onward, flaming plumage snapping in the wind.

The peninsula to which Mobliz clung grew as Terra descended through thin clouds. The town seemed so fragile, a mote of dust perched on the head of a needle. It was night, but a full moon shown overhead, its reflection glistening in the murky water that filled the ruts left by Kefka's Light of Judgment. From above, the method of his madness became clear. He had cut long, sweeping, artistic arcs with his beam, but in certain places the curving patterns terminated abruptly in dense clusters of frantic scratching that had utterly obliterated everything beneath them. Either something at the epicenter of these scratch marks had offended him or, more likely, Kefka's erratic nature had spontaneously rejected the congruence that came before as wretched.

_You know me so well, pet._

Terra angrily pushed the madman out of her mind and arrested her descent well above the tallest remaining buildings in Mobliz.

"Children!" Her Esper vocal cords squealed the word across the ruined town.

A form rose up from amidst the rubble. It had white horns and a black bandana wrapped around its head where its eyes ought to have been. A single eye peered out as it opened the hole where its mouth should have been.

_The monster Sabin had spoken of; the one that fought him and drove him out of Mobliz. How could the fickle children reject me and love this abomination?_

Terra called out once more. The monster slid quietly over the ground. It moved beneath her and looked up. It was almost tall enough to reach her with its claws.

Children's voices murmured from one of the dilapidated structures. Terra, with her magically heightened senses, made out their words: "Look. Look up in the sky."

The monster turned to the children. A deep voice rumbled from under its bandana, "Stay back."

Terra landed swiftly next to the monster, easily within its reach. _Let it strike, _she thought. _Let it reveal its cruelty._

Terra spoke to them, "Children, come out. Don't you recognize me?" Her voice screeched with otherworldly intonations. She cursed it. Her sister form had once horrified her, filled her with self-loathing. Now she embraced it, but what would the children think? She was tempted to take human form. The temptation was swept away by a flood of anger at the thought. _I will let no one have power over me._

Kefka's voice was silent, but she pictured him stifling a laugh with both hands over his mouth.

Children's faces appeared in broken windows. They looked out with surprise, hope, and confusion mixed on their faces.

"It's Mama!"

Terra smiled and knew everything would be alright.

The monster took advantage of her distraction. It swung a clawed hand at her. Terra's first instinct was to shield the statue with her body. Claws raked her ribs. Her shriek of pain scared rats into the shadows throughout the ruined town, but the Goddess was safe. Terra leapt into the sky, out of reach. Droplets of glowing blood falling to the ground like sparks from a fire.

"Now you see!" she yelled, "Look at how your _guardian_ attacks Mama!" Terra began to cast a spell.

A little girl ran out into the open. She shouted, "Stop, stop, no more fighting," but Terra had already conjured molten rock from the air. The liquid fire splashed on the skin of the monster and splattered to the ground around it. The cry of the little girl was lost beneath the monster's roar, but Terra saw her flailing futilely to get away from the fire that blackened her skin. Terra uttered another spell as fast as she could.

Duane ran out to the little girl with a cloak to smother the flames, but the monster was stumbling back and forth, beating its own flesh. In its madness it lashed out and mindlessly struck Duane. He stumbled into the mud and was motionless.

Finally Terra's spell manifested rain in a thick drenching downpour, but by then two bodies lay still. The monster was alive. Its breath rasped and its skin steamed, but it recovered its senses. It reached out to pick up the little girl. Its bandana had disintegrated. Black tears formed in the corners of the empty sockets where eyes ought to have been. The monster possessed the will of its creator. Relm wanted to protect the children in Mobliz.

From a nearby building Katarin ran out and flung herself over Duane's body. The children looked on dumbfounded from behind the broken walls of the nearby buildings.

Terra surveyed the scene with mounting panic. The manic voice in her head cheered for fire. _No,_ she thought, _I can undo this._

"Look at what this clumsy beast has done." Terra shouted. "Call it off. I can revive them both with my magic."

"Do it and be gone," Katarin hissed.

Anger swelled in Terra. No one spoke to her like this. The madman's voice whispered, _kill her._

"Wouldn't you rather I stayed?" Terra snarled. "Mama has her old powers again. Isn't that enough for the children to love me?"

The children were speechless, but Katarin, her eyes on Duane's mud-splattered face, spoke for them. "They loved a caring woman once who they called Mama. She couldn't protect them from Phunbaba, but they still loved her. You're not Mama. She's dead to us."

Pain stabbed through Terra's body. She had thought herself immune to words empty of magic, especially the words of these capricious people. Rebuttals rose in her throat like bile. _Y__ou drove me from Mobliz. You ostracized me when my magic failed._ But she would not protest and plead with these insects. She was an Esper, the last Esper, a noble race that humans nearly annihilated in their greed. Terra's mother had used her last breath to beg Emperor Gestahl to protect her daughter and he'd ripped Terra from her arms, smothered her mother to death, then trained Terra for war. Now the humans would all reap what they had sown.

Kefka's voice squealed with excitement in her head.

Terra said: "Grovel before the master of this world or I'll let your lover die."

Katarin looked up at her. Terra saw herself reflected in Katarin's eyes; a burning pink star floating low above the Earth, still dripping glowing embers of blood from her wounds. Katarin's face twisted and her head moved jerkily as if about to break from her neck.

"I hope you rot with Kefka for eternity, bitch."

_Kill her_, suggested Kefka's voice. It was too much.

Terra lifted Goddess aloft in preparation. What did Mobliz deserve? Poison? Break? Doom? Quake? Flare? Ultima?

_Fire, Fire, Fire!_ Screamed the voice in her head.

Terra opened her mouth to cast the spells.

_You will have peace from me after they are all dead, _Kefka promised.

Katarin closed her eyes and lowered her head to Duane.

_Did she not love him,_ Terra wondered?_ Would she not do anything for him? Did she not care about the children?_

The children stared up at Mama with misery in their eyes. Kefka's voice in her head chanted: _kill, kill, kill._

This wasn't what she'd sought in Mobliz. If they had welcomed her back she would've fallen to her knees and embraced them though this would've justified her cynicism that their love was fickle and opportunistic.

She'd thought herself omnipotent with her magic returned. That had been Kefka's mistake. _Aagh, why can't I get his voice out of my head?_

Terra had been the critical pawn for so long, manipulated by guilt and coercion, but no longer. She was master of her own destiny now, master even of Kefka though his words echoed in her skull.

Terra chose her spells carefully, chose them for herself, not for Katarin or Kefka or anyone else. Magic flowed through her from the Goddess. The spells sprang from her lips one after the other. Mobliz was silent as a grave when she flew away into the sky.


	12. Desert Reunion

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 11: Desert Reunion

Sabin and Cyan spent a cold night manacled in a small metal cage that smelled of chocobo droppings. They were awoken before dawn by commotion in the camp. Sabin pulled his knees under himself and squirmed upright to look around.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"The general's troops prepare for battle," Cyan replied.

"But there haven't even been any negotiations."

"There will be negotiations, but Celes first seeks leverage. She will dazzle her foe with the size of her force. She has at least thirty thousand troops to field: mostly swordsmen, archers, and siege workers, I estimate a hundred armored war birds and twice as many mounted skirmishers."

Sabin looked into the crush of bodies running back and forth. Canvas tents blocked his view of the rest of the army.

"How can you tell?"

"Estimation mostly and a keen ear. I am not unfamiliar with siege warfare."

Sabin nodded. Kefka had ended the siege of Doma by poisoning the water supply, resulting in the deaths of Cyan's wife and child. Sabin wondered grimly if Celes would actually follow through with her promise of slaughtering civilians should Edgar defy her.

As the sun separated from the horizon and began shooing away the cold of night, armored soldiers came to retrieve the prisoners. Sabin and Cyan did not resist as they were led to Celes and her elite guard comprised of a dozen soldiers on chocobos.

Celes rode atop a magnificent war bird in full barding. The chocobo sported a spiked champron on its head and a steel peytral displaying the imperial crest. It wore scale flanchards on its sides and wings, and its talons had been extended with gleaming razor-sharp blades.

Celes herself wore greaves over leather leggings and a white silk shirt beneath a sleeveless brigandine with imperial magitech armor represented in red on its front. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail and a thin gold circlet crowned her head. She did not speak to the captives, but ordered her men to secure them for riding.

Sabin gave Cyan a last troubled glance before he was bound hand and foot and draped like so much dead weight across the back of a chocobo.

They had spent the morning discussing a plan, but Sabin had objected fiercely to Cyan's proposal.

"Figaro will never surrender!" he had exclaimed loudly, causing some of Celes's nearby soldiers to curse him and kick sand into the cage.

"Sir Sabin," Cyan had urged in a quieter voice, "our foremost concern is Lady Terra. Thou spoke such words. If our worst fears come to pass, general Celes, with Figaro's weapons, will be our best hope of defeating her magic."

Intellectually Sabin agreed with Cyan's logic, only by uniting with Celes could they create a shield against Terra's power, and the only way to unite with Celes was by surrendering Figaro to her, but the thought of sacrificing Figaro was not an intellectual matter. Words in history books not yet written danced in Sabin's mind: The ineffectual Figaro brothers neglected their kingdom then surrendered it as soon as the first foreign boots hit the sand. The long proud Figaro lineage would end at Sabin's urging. He had thought himself above pride, but the weight of responsibility pushed from one side and crushed him against his pride on the other.

He swore that if got out of this alive he would never neglect his people again. In the meantime, he told Cyan that he would do what was best for the people of Figaro. This silenced the knight, but gave energy to the competing voices in his head. Would Celes fulfill her promise to raze South Figaro? What if Sabin chose wrong? Hadn't South Figaro suffered enough: being occupied by Gestahl's Empire while Figaro castle tunneled, then the rationing after the cataclysm, now this.

Celes, and her personal guard, with Sabin and Cyan bouncing along like baggage, rode out into the desert under a white banner of truce. Her army moved into battle formation behind them.

Edgar's keep rose like a mirage above the sand. It shimmered in the heat, its interior kept cool by air drawn up from caverns beneath the earth. Sabin craned his neck to look up at the castle. Two blue and magenta banners outlined with gold trim flapped hesitantly in the breeze. Sabin felt disgusted. Was that all his brother could muster? Celes had arrayed her whole army for this negotiation and Edgar had lofted two banners!

The castle did not look strong. Sabin felt a pang in his heart. As weak as it appeared, could he ask his brother to surrender it? Did it matter? Figaro castle was his brother's pride and joy; a marvel of engineering that shifted sand and moved the mass of stone on buried rails. The castle was so much Edgar's handiwork. Maybe it could never have been Sabin's. He shook the thought out of his head.

The wood doors of the castle groaned. Pulleys and wheels squeaked and heaved as the doors opened. Edgar, wearing a blue, hard-leather cuirass and gorget, rode out with an escort of royal guards. His regal purple cape flapped in the wind behind him. Sabin's throat tightened at the sight. Edgar looked the part of a king, even if he did not always act it, and Sabin felt proud of him. Though they had departed on poor terms, Sabin could not remain angry with his brother.

Edgar peered curiously at the two prisoners draped like luggage. Sabin knew the instant that Edgar recognized him. Edgar's face sagged with despair. _Yes, _thought Sabin, _the situation is worse than you imagined, dear brother_. Sabin looked away, embarrassed for having undermined his brother's already-weak position. Celes sat high in her saddle.

The elite guards dismounted and manhandled Sabin and Cyan to the ground. The sand was soft and not yet burning hot. Sabin was struck by conflicting emotions, pleasant memories of the past mixing with the shame at what he must ask of his brother and do to Figaro's legacy. He looked over to Cyan, to get a sense of the knight, but Cyan merely scanned the sky as if he expected Terra to drop from it at any minute.

"Celes!" Edgar called out. "When last we spoke I compared your beauty to the purity of a snowflake, but I was mistaken. Your loveliness is matched only by your penchant for treachery!"

"Greetings, King Edgar, always a pleasure to suffer your charm. I'm here to negotiate your surrender. I have prepared a list of terms." She drew a scroll and waved it at him. "I have no desire for bloodshed. Neither do I fear it."

Edgar's face twisted into a sneer. "Who are you? How can you do this to your friends after all we've been through? Or has your traitorous instinct always run so deep?"

Celes remained impassive. Beneath her, the war bird shifted feet as if it had received the insult. Sabin looked at his brother, hoping to send a signal of some kind for him to stand down, but Edgar strictly avoided his gaze.

"There is no need for harsh words," Celes said. "We live in a difficult world as it is. Perhaps you have forgotten that. This is not the world you once knew and I am not the person you once knew." Celes cleared her throat. "Let's start over. I am Empress Celes Chere, ex-imperial special forces magitek division, former imperial general. I have an army you cannot match that can raze South Figaro and storm your castle. Additionally, I hold your brother and your good friend Cyan Garamonde hostage. Do not think that any history between us would stay my sword should you rebuke me.

"The terms of your surrender are lenient: you shall acknowledge that I am absolute high ruler of all Figaro, provide me access to Figaro's weapon stockpiles, blueprints, and technological artifacts, pay a small yearly tribute, and give me the right to draft soldiers. That is all. You would remain in Figaro as acting fief lord second only to me."

"A puppet king!" Edgar exclaimed haughtily raising his chin.

"Brother, accede!" Sabin shouted before Edgar could compound his catastrophic mistakes. "All is not as it seems."

Edgar hesitated. He looked upon Sabin, his brow knit with confusion, or perhaps concern for Sabin's sanity.

Edgar looked back to Celes, but her face gave away nothing.

"Edgar," Sabin pleaded, "Magic returns. The world is in great danger."

"Dear brother, have you gone mad?" Edgar asked.

Cyan spoke up, "King, trust thine brother."

Shattering the illusion of confident and composed royalty, Edgar blurted out, "What should I do?" One of his followers, a man wearing chancellor's robes spurred his chocobo forward to advise the king, but he was too late.

Celes quickly spoke up, "Sabin has already answered that question; accede to me."

"Gather your most powerful amulets," urged Sabin.

Celes decided he had said enough. "Guard, gag the prisoners."

Sabin ducked under the gag thrust over his mouth. "The danger is Terra."

"Terra?" said Edgar.

"King Edgar," Celes said, "Let's focus on the situation at hand…"

"Empress!" A breathless imperial officer arrested his chocobo's furious run and addressed Celes. "Empress, an urgent matter requires your attention."

Everyone turned towards the interrupting officer. Celes glared with a force that would surely have killed him if magic had held sway, but her eyes did not linger when she saw the black smoke rising behind him. Fires raged in her army's camp and the battle lines stirred with unrest.

"What is it?" she barked.

"Monsters. Horrible creatures come from the sea and attack us."

Sabin could not resist the opportunity for amusement at Celes's expense. "Ah," he said absentmindedly, "I suppose that would be Relm and her _menagerie_. Did I forget to mention that she pursued us? It must have slipped my mind."

Celes turned back to Edgar. "We will finish these negotiations later. Guards, secure these two. Commanders, turn the troops to the south. Move out!"

Everyone began to move at once, but amidst the commotion Cyan seemed removed. He stood stock still and stared into the sky. He spoke softly, but everyone heard his words: "She is here."

A fiery pink creature streaked through the air faster than any bird or beast splitting the sky as it came on towards them. Behind the point of light huddled thick black clouds like thuggish body guards.

Sabin shook his head, trying to deny his own eyes. He had thought there would be time to prepare, ally Celes and Figaro, train and equip an army for magical warfare. Instead Terra came and those who ought to have been allies against her were enemies. What was worse, they presented her with an image of the human animal she so despised, an image of senseless warfare. His clever scheme to pit Relm and Celes against each other in order to save Figaro had utterly backfired. He cursed himself for not having foreseen this.

"You have your orders," Celes screamed. Her men resumed their activity with vigor, as if eager for simple instructions to follow. Sabin was pulled up over the back of a chocobo. He called out to Edgar one last time, "Edgar, gather your weapons and amulets. Ride out to us."

Then Edgar was gone, left behind in the sand and dust kicked up by the chocobo.

Celes's battle line was in chaos. The rearguard fled north, to the front, carrying fear with them like a contagion. Celes's commanders peeled off to rally the battalions into a semblance of order. Celes herself plunged into the middle of the tumult with Sabin, Cyan, and her personal escort close behind.


	13. Homecoming

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Chapter 12: Homecoming

Sabin readied himself for the challenge to come, not the chaotic battle between Celes's invading army and Relm's monsters, for that he was well trained. It was the certainty that he must disarm or talk down a troubled, young, female, half-magic hybrid that made him quiver like a green recruit.

Celes barked orders and her soldiers eagerly cleared a path for her war bird and retinue. Sabin bounced precariously on the back of another war chocobo. The commander, to whose saddle Sabin was chained, urged his bird forward into the masses of panicked rank and file. Sabin could see nothing but sand and boots flashing by.

His mind raced to solve the problem of how to get Terra's attention, ignoring for the moment that he had no idea what to do once he got her attention.

Something jostled the chocobo and Sabin nearly slipped off. He grabbed a handful of feathers to avoid being dragged along behind the animal. The chocobo warked with angry surprise. This gave him an idea. He took two handfuls of bright yellow feathers and yanked as hard as he could.

The chocobo warked, flapped its vestigial wings, and reared up. The rider pulled at the reins and Sabin pulled at the rider. They both toppled to the sand as the chocobo fought to free itself from its sadistic cargo. Sabin rolled over the rider, pushed him face down in the sand with one hand while he slipped out a dirk from the man's belt and cut the leather straps on the saddle. The saddle slid off. The chocobo stumbled with sudden freedom and then pushed its way out of the crowd.

The commander flailed blindly. Sabin kept holding him down until Sabin was free of his manacles. Finally he released the commander. The man sucked in air then coughed up sand.

Sabin clapped him on the back. "You'll live, if any of us do." The commander remained on his hands and knees coughing and gasping.

Sabin looked up. A bright red light cut across the darkening sky leaving a contrail in its wake. The light spun once in a circle then paused. Sabin felt a shiver run down his spine. A powerful being watched.

He looked around for Celes. Her saber whirled in the air, flashing in the morning light splaying across the desert. She shouted to her troops from atop her bird and to her credit they rallied. Then a wolf-like monster twice as big as a chocobo bowled over her mount.

The monster let out an explosive bark, coughing black smoke into the air. It seemed to shiver, its fur standing on end and undulating, but it was not covered in fur, Sabin realized. Loops of bony spikes spun around its legs, neck and torso like Edgar's steam powered "chain" saw. Soldiers pushed each other out of the way in their haste to flee, but the monster thrashed amidst them, its bones slicing through leather and chain mail.

Celes, her crown lost and her hair disheveled, rose from the dust in front of the beast. It opened its mouth and barked. Rows of teeth sawed back and forth behind its sooty breath. Celes swiftly put her saber through its eye. The monster spasmed and slumped dead, but the damage had been done. The soldiers panicked once more.

Someone bumped into Sabin from behind, nearly knocking him over. The inadvertent collision saved his life as a spearbird swooped over his ducked head. Relm's monsters were everywhere. Celes's soldiers didn't know which way to run so they were running every which way.

"Sir Sabin!"

Sabin looked around at the sound of Cyan's voice. Through the masses of men rallying, fleeing, or gaping in dumbfounded horror, he saw Cyan. An eye blackened and his face bloodied, Cyan moved towards him, wielding a chipped Katzbalger sword.

"Good to see you." Sabin smiled stubbornly.

Cyan, ever-serious frowned with a scold on his tongue, but instead of chiding he asked, "What do we do now?"

"We'll lure her to the ground. It's our only hope of wresting the statue from her."

"To Celes," Cyan said, heading towards her without waiting for Sabin's assent. Celes stood atop a growing mound of monster corpses, cutting down beasts and barking orders, giving every impression of a living monument to futility.

"Celes," Cyan called out, "Terra has arrived! Believe us. She brings magic with her."

Celes looked up. The sky had filled with ominous dark clouds the likes of which the desert sky had never seen before. Relm's spearbirds rose up to battle Terra. A sprawling burst of lightning branched through the sky and the spearbirds rained to earth dead as dust.

The sounds of battle diminished as the combatants turned faces upwards. Sabin, however, watched Celes. She was calculating, subordinating frustration and anger to pragmatism.

The wind began to hiss, flicking sand against skin from all angles. The desert itself undulated like the surface of the ocean. The wind pushed and pulled, beat down and lifted up. It picked pockets and scabbards, replacing the contents with sand. Lightning flashed, illuminating a dark structure taking form up in the swirling chaos. The weird wind's million fingers constructed it. Terra was raising a tower.

Celes looked Sabin in the eyes. She commanded, "Conceal yourselves. I will bring her to me."

Sabin didn't like it, but he obeyed. He and Cyan dispersed amongst the soldiers. They picked up discarded shields and raised them over their heads to hide from Terra's sight. Around them Celes's soldiers resorted to wild supplications and tearing at their hair in terror. The soldiers held position for the sole reason that they could not determine which direction to flee.

A monster clambered up the mound of corpses towards Celes. It was a black-haired, simian creature with a pair of scorpion tales where its arms should have been. Celes took one look at the monster then closed her eyes.

Suddenly Sabin felt a chill, a real and true chill, not one of fear. The scorpion ape stamped the ground and flailed its stingers. It tumbled backwards, shards of ice, but no sound, spinning from its mouth. The air around the monster cleared. The blur of heat and dust vanished and the air tinged blue from Celes's spell: Absolute Zero.

Sabin looked to Cyan with fear and confusion contorting his face. "How can Celes cast magic, even in Goddess's presence? How did you know she could?" The wind snatched the words, but Cyan understood.

He mouthed the response, "lucky guess".

Celes had been infused with magicite as a child. She had known magic far longer than they. The capacity must have remained stronger in her. Some lucky guess, Sabin thought. A spell would surely attract Terra's attention. And it had.

Flashes of lightning preceded Terra's descent. The bolts wove through the sandy air leaving jagged glass statues like upturned trees in their wake. Then the fabric of space itself tore open: X-Zone. Sabin found himself staring at cold, un-blinking stars, ever so clear and close. The corpse of the ape-scorpion vanished into the maw of the rift. Soldiers were sucked away, their hands full of futilely grasped sand. Sabin felt the pull of the void. It lifted him. The empty lifelessness sought to destroy him. Sabin feared as he had never feared before. He was lifted into the air. Without any sort of leverage he was pulled irresistibly towards the emptiness.

Then the undulating edges collapsed. Sabin fell to the ground. The fabric of reality stitched and healed leaving a clearing between Celes on one side and Sabin and Cyan on the other.

Terra, burning with Esper flame, landed softly in the clearing. The soldiers, able to focus now on an unambiguous terror, fled. The Esper-child ignored them. She faced Celes, her back to Sabin and Cyan. She held the head of Goddess in the crook of her arm.

"Empress," she said with a mocking curtsy, "Did you miss your power?" She gestured at the fleeing soldiers. "Magic is so much more effective than ordering the rabble to do your bidding."

Sabin leaped to his feet and charged Terra. This was their only chance. For a moment he considered striking Terra herself, but he couldn't do it. He told himself that the risk was too great since he had no idea how to render an Esper unconscious, if such a thing was even possible. Instead he drove his knuckles between her elbow and torso, connecting with the stone head, and dislodging it from her grasp. It flew through the air and landed softly in the sand at Celes's feet.

Terra shrieked. She backhanded Sabin. With her supernatural strength it was like being punched by a Hades Gigas. Sabin sprawled into the sand. His ears sang and the colors of his vision bled across each other.

"Give it back," Terra yelled at Celes.

Celes stepped in front of the bust, her sword raised. "No. I'll take this old statue as partial recompense for the army you've cost me. That seems at least fair."

"Celes, if you're so eager to have a statue…" Terra smiled mischievously.

The first sensible image that came to Sabin's recovering sight was Terra making signs with her hands and her lips motioning for a spell: Petrify. Sabin rolled to get his hands under him. The instinct to run was strong even though he knew it was too late.

Terra attempted to breathe power into the spell, but the breath was sucked from her lungs. The enchanted breath flew as a shimmering phantasm and coalesced around Celes's blade. It hugged the sword tightly, merging with the metal.

Terra clutched her chest and took gasping breaths.

Celes raised her eyebrows. "It hasn't been that long, Terra. Surely you haven't forgotten the little trick I do with my runic blade?"

Terra's flaming skin shimmered like a bird ruffling its feathers. "I've always been suspicious of a magic user who reserved the ability to nullify magic." Terra drew her swords.

"Don't impede yourself with both those big clumsy swords," Celes said, "or this will be too easy for me."

"I only need the one." Terra replaced Ragnarok in its scabbard.

Atma Weapon gleamed in the presence of the Goddess. It was more than mere steel now. Sabin tried to warn Celes, "Her sword, the Goddess!"

Terra rushed in swinging. She had had no formal training while Celes had practically been born with a saber in hand. Celes's parry should have swatted Terra's attack aside, but Atma Weapon's magic had been renewed. Celes was the one knocked back, the blow resounding up her arm.

Terra knelt to scoop up the Goddess, but before she grasped it.

"Have at thee," Cyan yelled, his Katzbalger arcing down.

Atma weapon rose up to deflect the blow but Terra was driven back. She muttered a spell, but again the breath was sucked from her lips as Celes redirected the energy to her runic blade. Sparks flew from Terra's skin as her anger increased.

Sabin looked around for something to destroy the statue with but the only debris in his vicinity was discarded shields, bows, and, of course, sand, not a single sturdy rock or sword as far as the eye could see.

Sabin searched frantically while Terra gave in to Atma Weapon's will. She knocked Cyan's sword aside with each blow and Cyan struggled to keep up his defenses.

Finally Sabin found a wooden kite shield with a small round metal centerpiece. Hopefully it would be enough to bash Goddess to pieces. He turned in time to see a two-handed blow from Terra knock Cyan's sword out of his hand. Sabin heard the crack of bone breaking in Cyan's arm. He fell to the ground. Sabin ran forward with the shield in hand, but he would never make it in time.

Consumed by rage, Terra raised Atma Weapon to strike Cyan's defenseless form. Her sword quivered at its apex. Atma Weapon's will, long dormant but now awake, demanded blood.

Terra's sword came down and sank into the head of a horned beast. Relm, riding on the back of an eight legged ram, had leapt in front of her. The beast grunted and fell. Cyan tried to roll out of the way, but was pinned beneath the collapsing monster. Relm was pitched off.

Terra's sword arm shivered as she pulled the blade from the skull. She looked shaken. Sabin saw the mixture of emotion on her face. She would have killed Cyan.

She shouted, but her bravado sounded forced, "Here's one who knows the lure of magic!"

Relm scampered to her feet. She backed away, her eyes bulging with terror. "Don't say that. I didn't want this."

"Of course not," Terra sneered. "You just wanted your precious art." Terra once more cast Petrify and again Celes's runic blade struck like a punch to the diaphragm. "That's getting tiresome," Terra hissed.

Celes's blade had begun to glow and give off heat. She grimaced and Sabin realized the sword was burning her hand as the magical power sequestered within converted to heat. Celes scooped up the statue and held it in her free arm. Sabin tried to move closer.

"Throw me the statue," he shouted.

Celes shook her head, not taking her eyes off Terra.

Terra lunged and sword strikes rang out. Sabin looked on helplessly. Celes could not keep this up. Every parry racked her arm. If she would only give him the statue…

Cyan beckoned to him feebly. Sabin dropped the shield and ran to his aid. He lifted the monster off Cyan's body.

"Sir Sabin, we cannot defeat her."

"Don't talk like that."

"There's another way." Cyan looked up at Sabin, propping himself up on his one good arm, his eyes begging Sabin to understand. "Relm…"

"Relm can still paint monsters, but what good…"

Cyan glared and Sabin felt glad the man had no magic left in his bones.

Cyan spoke again, "Relm must paint the Sealed Gate. She must paint it _open_."

The striking of swords came at a quicker pace as Terra sensed Celes flagging.

"That won't work, and even if it did, I don't understand why…"

Cyan grabbed Sabin's forearm with painful force. "Why did Terra come here?"

"I don't have time for riddles!" Sabin exclaimed.

"Why didst _thou_ come here?"

Sabin paused. _I want to be home when the world ends._

Sabin understood then. He looked around for Relm. She stood atop the mound of corpses Celes had created. Relm beckoned her creatures, the three-legged monster built like an easel with fresh canvas, and the stork-like creature with brush and palette.

"Relm!" Sabin called to her. She didn't even spare him a glance as her implements were delivered into her arms. She started to paint frantically, to bring monsters into existence. Sabin dashed forward and caught her arm.

"No!" she screamed. "I'm on your side. We have to stop Terra."

"I know. That's why you have to paint the Sealed Gate as it once was, open."

Suddenly Relm looked very young. Her thoughts were written on her face: _That might work, might be the only thing that would work. The fate of the world rests on me, a girl who enjoys doodling._

"I can't. I'm not that good."

Anger welled up in Sabin. How could she be such a coward! He wanted to slap her.

"Relm!" Cyan called out. "You can do it. Forget everything but the process."

She began to paint. Sabin felt grateful that one of them had had experience with children.

"There," Relm said. Sabin was caught off guard by Relm's speed. He looked over her shoulder at a realistic image of the Sealed Gate, its doors open revealing the Esper world on the other side.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"It just appears, but it's not working. I haven't realized it well enough."

"Try again," Sabin shouted, panic rising in his voice.

Relm tore away the paper and began again, but the sound of swords had ceased.

The howling winds seemed to part so they all heard Celes's sword, knocked from her hand, _thunking_ into the sand. Terra breathed the aural runes of Petrify. The head of Goddess rolled from Celes's stone finger tips. Terra cast Petrify again and Relm became a motionless statue.

Sabin despaired. "Terra," he started to plead. She spat out a simple spell. Sabin's lips sealed shut, "Mute" tattooed across his face. Terra bent to pick up the bust. All her attention was focused on it. She did not see Edgar and his guards riding full tilt on their chocobos, but Sabin saw. Edgar raised his auto-crossbow and took aim at Terra's back. The auto-crossbow chewed through a leather clip of bolts, discarding the clip like a rag and launching the metal projectiles into the air.

_Not like this,_ Sabin thought. Once upon a time Sabin had been a man of action, but since the cataclysm he had been paralyzed by fear, fear of making an irreversible mistake. That's why he had been unable to become the ruler that Figaro needed. That's why he had let his brother take responsibility, but abandoning Figaro had been his greatest mistake. Terra was his friend. He would not abandon her, no matter the consequences. He stepped in front of the crossbow bolts. They struck him in rapid succession. He felt pain for only a moment.

Terra, the bust in hand, spun around and flung a spell in Edgar's direction. It caught all of them: Sabin, Edgar, his men, and their birds. A bronze sheen fell over them. Edgar's face became preternaturally smooth and metallic. They all froze in place: the birds mid-stride, Sabin pitched back, blood dashing into the air. He saw Edgar's eyes replaced by motionless clock faces. Pocket watch chains materialized and wrapped about his neck. Time stopped for them all.

Sabin awoke to Terra's human face, white porcelain skin, pointed chin, spiky short green hair, and sea green eyes that searched him. He was in pain.

"Why did you save me?" she asked.

"Because I knew you wouldn't let me die." Sabin tried to sit up. It felt like being stabbed with nine hot pokers.

"The wounds are still fresh," Terra said. "I only used Phoenix Down on you."

"Ah, I earned my life back, but not your trust."

"I'm an imperial witch," she said dryly.

"…and you killed fifty of the Emperor's best soldiers in under a minute. So I've heard."

"Alright, you proved I'm no killer, but I won't let you take magic away from me again. You don't understand. That was worse than dying."

Sabin shook his head delicately. "I don't want anyone to have magic _except_ you. Where are the others?"

Terra's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "The others are as they were: stone, stone, and stopped in time."

"We need Relm. She can open the Sealed Gate."

"Impossible!" Terra scoffed. "The gate is ruined. All the magic in the world that was could not reopen it."

"Then you will have to decide between killing your friends and killing half of yourself."

"That won't be necessary," said a resonant, otherworldly voice.

Terra quivered, shaking her head.

"Terra." The voice spoke again.

"No, I don't believe it."

"It's true," said Sabin. "It's your father."

Terra turned to her father. He had wild green hair like her own. His skin bulged strangely, revealing his non-human endoskeleton. His skin was a calico of earth tones: brown, green, and blue.

Terra's mouth pumped like a fish out of water. She shook her head again.

"No. This is impossible." Terra raised her hands, performed the motions and spoke the sounds of Dispel. Her father disappeared in a puff of magic vapor.

"I knew it!" She shrieked. "Trickster!"

Sabin gaped in shock. His mind raced. Relm must have panicked; thought that painting Terra's father would be easier than the gate and completed the image just before Petrify hit her. What had she done?

Terra drew Ragnarok from her back. Atma Weapon was one thing; an animal of a sword with a mind of its own, unmatched in single combat, but Ragnarok was something else entirely. In the presence of magic the sword, if used, would cast Ultima.

Petrify could be undone with Soft. Stop Time, which enveloped Edgar, could be Dispelled. Ultima, however, was raw destruction.

"Terra," Sabin begged, "Relm can open the true gate. You must believe me. She panicked. She didn't have time to open it for real."

Terra looked down on Sabin, Goddess under her left arm, Ragnarok raised in her right. "You are a clever deceiver. You humans would do anything to prolong your pitiful little lives."

Sabin looked into Terra's face and saw nothing recognizable there. He was terrified, but forced words out of his mouth. "Terra, you killed because Kefka told you to, or Banon did. You killed soldiers and beasts, but you can't kill your friends. I would have died for you."

Ragnarok began to glow, drawing in mana to cast its world-wrecker.

"No. You died to save your friends, but I'm not one of them. You raised sword and arrow against me. I will take magic from your world only after I make the world safe by taking all life from it. Kefka commands me."

Terra swung the sword.

Sabin closed his eyes. "At least I will die in my homeland."

The fall of the sword stopped.

"Home," Terra whispered. She held the sword steady then flipped it over, caught the blade, handed Ragnarok hilt-first to Sabin.

"If this fails," she said. "Kill me quickly." Terra backed away, the skin around her eyes tight with un-cried tears. She cast Soft on Relm and Heal on Sabin.

He felt a warm white light emanating from his center, moving outwards and pushing away all that was wrong and broken. He stood up, keeping Ragnarok pointed at the ground.

Relm, for all the new softness of her skin, stood as still as a statue, petrified with fear and surprise.

"Relm," Sabin called out. "It's alright. Don't be afraid. We need a painting."

She shook her head. "I can't do it."

"Relm, you have to," Sabin urged.

Terra closed her eyes. Her mouth moving. Her face twitching. She was not casting a spell. It looked to Sabin as if she was talking to herself. Talking to the madman inside her head, he realized.

Relm lifted her brush unsteadily. Her arm was shaking. She was right. She'd never be able to paint the gate like this.

Sabin forced himself to lift Ragnarok and hold it behind Terra's head, ready to strike her down. His arms trembled. _Please don't make me do this._ "Relm," he said, "we're safe. Relax, and paint the gate."

She nodded hesitantly and began to work. The desert was quiet and time stretched on. The soldiers had fled. Relm's creatures kept their distance. Terra's wind snaked through the dunes anxiously.

Relm finally lifted brush from canvas. Nothing happened. She looked from Sabin to Terra with despair.

"I can't. I can't do it. I'm just not strong enough."

Sabin knew what he must do. He had to do it, before Terra could react. She had asked him to kill her. Sabin's arms refused to move though they were heavy from holding the sword aloft. He lowered the sword to the ground.

"I haven't come so far to kill you now. Do what you must," he said.

Terra, clutching Goddess in front of her, opened her eyes and walked towards Relm. Relm's eyes widened. She looked at Sabin, imploring him to use the sword, but Sabin kept it lowered at his side, hoping that Terra would erase him from existence before he knew the extent of his failure.

Terra exploded into pink flames, her Esper form. Sabin momentarily wondered how the end would come, but then he knew: fire. Terra had always been a creature of fire and Kefka... _Burn everything!_

Terra lifted Goddess then handed the bust to Relm. "Take it," she said, "and give me your brush. Then guide my hand to paint the gate."

Sabin let his breath out, but the tension in his chest remained.

Relm took Goddess in quivering hands then placed a brush between Terra's long pink, clawed fingers. Relm placed a hand over Terra's and guided the brush. Sabin looked on, praying to Terra's ancestors.

When the brush lifted, Relm and Terra had painted a perfect replica of the gate. Its doors open, the liminal space shimmering with magic.

An otherworldly voice spoke waveringly, "Terra. I thought myself a fool for dreaming of the day when I would see you again."

Terra's father, Maduin, stood before the Sealed Gate, which had manifested silently and suddenly in the middle of the Figaro Desert.

Terra looked away from him. "I'm so sorry," she said.

Maduin went to her, embraced her. "Terra, you've done nothing that can't be undone. Let's go home."

Maduin released her and Terra finally looked into his eyes. Her flaming mane thrashed, but the motion was reminiscent of anxiousness, not anger.

Terra turned to Relm, closed the young woman's hand around the brush as Relm was too awestruck to retrieve it herself. Terra took Goddess from her then walked to the gate holding her father's hand.

Sabin said nothing, could think of nothing to say, but knew that he must speak for he would never see Terra again.

Terra and Maduin stopped before the gate. Together they Dispelled Edgar. Edgar cried out as he suddenly snapped back into normal time. He and his retinue reined their mounts and tried to get their bearings. Terra Softened Celes. Color started in from the tip of her stone gray nose and rushed through the rest of her body. She collapsed to the ground. Terra healed Cyan who had passed out from his injury. Cyan stood and helped Celes to her feet. Edgar, quite unnecessarily, commanded his men to slow and walked his chocobo towards the Sealed Gate.

"Friends," Terra said, "Please forgive me for what I've done."

"We do," said Sabin. "And we will miss you."

Terra and her father turned towards the gate, but Terra whirled suddenly, "In Mobliz, I... I Petrified them all. I mean, I healed them first. Some were badly injured. I tried to help. I… They are going to be frightened when my spell dissolves."

"We will send someone to look after them," Sabin assured her.

Terra turned back to the gate.

Relm cried out, "Wait! You won't need the Goddess. There's plenty of magic in the Esper world. Leave it behind for us. My creatures will die without it."

Relm's eyes watered. She spied about desperately for a means of stopping Terra from taking the head. To her surprise Terra stopped at the threshold and held out the statue. Relm ran forward and seized it from her outstretched arms.

Relm cradled the statue, tears streaming freely down her face and falling upon the bust.

Terra addressed them all: "I must go. I was never meant to live alone in this world. I won't forget you, friends."

"We shall not forget thou," said Cyan.

Terra and her father stepped through the shimmering gate. Terra's voice bubbled through as if she were speaking under water. Sabin understood her words and they softened him like a spell. She said, "The voice is gone." And Maduin replied, "The madman can't reach you here."

The sounds from the gate faded, but the shimmering surface between its massive open doors remained. Relm continued to stroke the head of the Goddess, her crouched form silhouetted by the gate's glow.

"Should we..." Cyan started, but Sabin put a hand on his shoulder.

"Wait a moment."

Relm sobbed, her chest pumping. She lifted herself to her feet and gave a battle cry as she pitched the head of the Goddess through the gate.

The stone statue pierced the shimmering surface. As soon as it disappeared, the gate itself vanished from existence.

Overhead the black clouds split and rays of sun stabbed through like bright fingers. The fingers seemed to pull apart the black clouds until they were no more. Relm's creatures became transparent and gradually disappeared into nothingness. A desert wind, a natural wind, picked up and began to chip away the tower Terra had attempted to erect.

Sabin retrieved Celes's sword then handed it to her hilt first. She accepted it grudgingly.

"Magic is truly gone then?" Celes asked.

"I certainly hope so," Sabin replied.

"What happens now?"

Sabin matched her icy stare. "Now you will sign a truce recognizing Figaro's right to self rule now and forever. You will disband your fleet and return to Kohlingen or wherever you've decided to establish your throne. The two western continents are yours. I hope you rule them wisely."

"And if I refuse?" she asked.

Edgar dismounted nearby and cheerily answered, "Then you will become a permanent guest of Figaro castle. We have some lovely prison cells that have been sitting empty for some time now."

"That won't be necessary," said Sabin.

Sabin hugged his brother tightly, briefly.

"It is good to see you," said Edgar.

"And you. I hope you can accept what I am about to tell you."

Edgar furrowed his brow in confusion.

"You once offered me the throne, dear brother," said Sabin. "I am belatedly accepting your offer. You will go to the castle and order your soldiers to round up Celes's men before they die of exposure in the desert. Celes's soldiers will be given the choice of returning to Zozo or accepting paid work in South Figaro constructing irrigation canals and earthworks. Then you will announce that you are stepping aside as king and that your brother will sit on the throne. I do not intend to share my power."

Edgar's mounted soldiers put hands to hilts, ready to defend their king against his brother, but their faces were overrun with discomfort.

Edgar said, "Brother, have I wronged you in some way?"

Sabin smiled. "This is no punishment, as you will see. South Figaro desperately needs a good engineer. Doesn't that sound more interesting than entertaining foreign dignitaries and planning the next round of rationing and taxes?"

Edgar threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Indeed! Why didn't we arrange this years ago?"

"Some things are hard to see when we stand too close to them."

"What shall become of us?" Cyan asked. He had placed an arm over Relm's shoulders. She had stopped crying, but wavered with aftershocks of emotion.

Sabin looked first to Relm. "Relm, Mobliz needs a leader. I think you would be welcomed there. What do you think?"

Relm remained silent, mulling it over before looking up at Sabin. "I'll do my best."

"Relm shall have my assistance if she so desires," said Cyan.

She nodded. "I'd like that."

Sabin lead the way back to the castle, his feet headed for the future, his mind lingering over what he had lost, what they had all lost; a good friend. Terra was undoubtedly in a better place now, but he could not help but think that if things had been different, Terra could have been happy in this world.

Perhaps someday, far from now, the link between the esper and human worlds could be reopened and the two species would be able to live in harmony. There would have to be many changes in men's hearts before that day came. Sabin was eager to get to work.


	14. Epilogue

Final Fantasy VI: World of Ruin

Epilogue

Cyan and Relm wasted little time. They traveled to Mobliz bearing food and medical supplies on one of Celes's confiscated vessels. They found Katarin tending to Duane and the burned little girl, both of whom were dazed, but without injury.

Cyan wrote to Sabin and Edgar regularly. In Relm he found a reason to go on living, though he noted that fourteen was a trying age for an old man to suddenly inherit a daughter.

Cyan told them that Relm had arranged a democracy in Mobliz. "She explains to me that instead of loyalty to a king, the people shall have loyalty to the state. I am skeptical." He wrote.

Relm eventually returned to her art. To everyone's relief she was unable to manifest physical forms from the representations. Her art went through a phase in which she painted only images of Terra. She organized the paintings for an exhibit in Jidoor. The exhibit was praised by critics who noted the transition from the hopeful and naïve depictions of Terra, to the violent and selfish, and finally to the human, real, embodied, natural, and once more hopeful.

Figaro continued to support Mobliz with the little it could spare until Mobliz was once more able to support itself. King Sabin also ensured that an ambassador was sent to Thamasa to reconnect with the bewildered residence who had gradually come out of hiding to find that all the horrible beasts had vanished without a trace. The people of Thamasa never did get a clear explanation of what had happened.

Locke had been serving as ruler of the two western continents in Celes's absence. Much to Locke's surprise, the people grew to love him and he gained some much needed self-confidence.

When Celes returned to the new imperial capital of Kohlingen, she went straight to the throne room to see Locke. She barged into the room in a foul mood. Locke stood up from the throne, stared straight into her eyes, and said, "My love, I will no longer take orders from you like a slave, I'd like a say in how the empire is run, and furthermore..." but before he could finish his prepared speech, she ascended the dais and slugged him across the face. Then she took him by the collar and led him straight to their bedchamber to make passionate love to him.

She confessed afterward that she found his new-found gall irresistibly attractive. Locke and Celes's relationship was characterized by such passionate mood swings for some time, but Locke got better at dodging her punches. He also came to realize and accept that though Celes would never be his Rachel, they could have a different, equally beautiful relationship if they worked at it.

Nine months later they had a baby boy who they named Cid. Cid became the love of Celes's life. Motherhood tempered the sharper edges of her personality. Cid grew into a mischievous, sneaky child who tried the patience of his parents and the palace guards at every turn.

Celes, the severely humbled empress, was slow to let go of her ambition, but eventually came to be satisfied ruling only one third of the world. She was even overheard to complain from time to time about the huge responsibility of her position and delegated some authority to her husband.

In his spare time, Locke turned his long fingers away from pockets to the ivories of the piano. Whenever possible he and Celes hosted the Figaro brothers. Edgar, predictably, hit on the serving girls.

Sabin moved the capital to South Figaro and reduced the Figaro Keep to the status of a small research lab. Edgar outdid himself with the design and supervision of the irrigation system. It became world renowned as an amazing feat of engineering. Celes's shell shocked army was rounded up. Their labor was instrumental in the construction of the canals. Many of the soldiers were also recruited for an expedition to Narshe, which succeeded at reopening the mine and making the city inhabitable once more.

Sabin, never having had much interaction with women took well-intentioned, but poor advice from his brother. Despite Edgar's misguided advice Sabin eventually married the bright, strong-willed granddaughter of the South Figaro innkeeper. Edgar remained a bachelor until the end.

Sabin made time to resume his meditation and a modicum of his former training. After many years he finally found time to open a small martial arts training center in South Figaro, but his focus remained on his position as king, servant to all the people of Figaro. They were, after all, his finest pupils.

The world slowly healed.


End file.
